The collapse of funding for serious independent film has forced Alexander Kluge to seek alternative channels for his cinema practice. As a consequence, for the last four years he has worked almost exclusively in television. Joining with other German filmmakers including Schlondorff, Herzog and Margarethe von Trotta, he created the TV program "Ten to Eleven." In this Monday night spot, Kluge co-opts popular image-culture in his typically baroque manner, combining an abbreviated brand of Western Civ, highly compressed opera, a slapdash version of film history, and gruff political critique. Kluge doesn't view his TV sojourn as a retreat or a failure of resources. As elliptical and demanding as his theatrical films, Kluge's television work has allowed him to rediscover cinema. The four segments in tonight's program are fantastical blends of Méliès' fictional style and Lumière's documentary approach, fused by an exotic graphic sense. But the ideas pursued are very much of our time-the proliferation of manufactured fantasy, the breakdown of colonialism, the cruel fate of the spectator. In Why Are You Crying, Antonio?, Mussolini and Chamberlain attend a 1938 performance of Meyerbeer's Macbeth. Chamberlain's inability to understand the political prophecies of the opera leads to the invasion of Czechoslavakia and the prelude to the war. However, the ironic fantasy that "a new beginning" is possible leaks in as a subtext. The African Lady, or Love with a Fatal Outcome is a guide to imaginary operas, really truncated versions of the real thing-Madame Butterfly, Carmen, Aida and others. These compositions enfold a scenario about the dark woman, the erotic Other of the age of exploration who is always abandoned by her white lover. The Eiffel Tower, King Kong and The White Woman pits the theft of the Eiffel Tower against the anarchic sexuality of the New World as symbolized by the Great Ape. The loftiness of European culture is transported to the American West where libidinous venality reigns. The story of Argentine tango star Carlos Gardel is retold in Blue Hour Tango Time. Here, the spectacle of romance becomes a cipher for the tango, "a sad thought one can dance." This is a tangy trip through displaced desires and the tragedy of "new beginnings." -Steve Seid