Oliver Hirschbiegel
«Mörderische Entscheidung»

In 1991 two German TV stations produced «Mörderische Entscheidung» (Murderous Decision) by Oliver Hirschbiegel, a cross-genre story somewhere between film noir and detective movie. The film was shot in two versions: one was from the perspective of a woman, the other followed a male figure. Both films began identically, then separated, sometimes met in double version of scenes with both characters, and at the end became identical again. What is interesting about Mörderische Entscheidung is that it demonstrates in almost didactical fashion all possible relations between the two narrations. Hirschbiegel uses the narrative voids we know from film noir as a general style to give the viewer the feeling that a lack of certain information is not caused by zapping incorrectly. To make sure that main story remains understandable important information was given on both channels at the same time. Hirschbiegel also tried to direct audience attention towards one channel—if not to say make people zap due to boredom—by reducing the amount of information given on the other channel. [...] The experiment worked best when both versions showed the same information from different points of view—be it a classical shot/reverse-shot-relationhip or a scene that was broadcasted and filmed from the monitor. The Aristotelian unity of space and time had to remain untouched, and along with it the narration.

(Source: Birk Weiberg, «Beyond Interactive Cinema,» http://keyframe.org/txt/interact)