It may simply be the quality of audio in the downloaded version we watched, but to my ear there’s a strange, quiet noise which pervades Marc Karlin's 1989 Utopias. A subtle hissing plays throughout various shots, almost like the uneasy background noise from David Lynch’s Eraserhead. This subtle sounds found various different contexts. It plays over a photo of steaming pipes from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. I first noticed it when the camera cuts from Marsha Marshall to a boiling kettle; we cut through other household tasks in close-up, feeding a fire and kneading bread, then suddenly to images of a demolition sight. Now it’s in the hiss is of the carnivorous machinery tearing down locally industry. (There’s something of Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames in this montage.)