David Bowie's 1978 Isolar II tour footage to be shown in immersive 'Stage' event in Berlin
Previously unseen film from the 1978 Isolar II World Tour will be projected on three screens at Berlin's Uber Arena, with new lighting and surround sound, during the Berlin Film Festival.
A new immersive concert experience built around David Bowie's 1978 Isolar II World Tour will debut at Berlin's Uber Arena on Valentine's Day, during the Berlin Film Festival. Variety reports that the production, titled Stage, pairs previously unseen footage of Bowie from the tour with added dramatic lighting.
The footage was found by filmmaker Brett Morgen while he was making Moonage Daydream, his film about Bowie. Variety reports that Morgen collaborated on Stage with Bowie's estate, the Berlinale and Rob Hallett's Wonderworld. He is also due to appear around that time as a headlining speaker at the Berlinale's European Film Market.
How the show is staged
The presentation will use large-scale projections on three screens, along with transparent LED screens. Patrick Woodroffe, who has worked on live presentations for the Rolling Stones and Elton John, designed the lighting. Paul Massey, the audio engineer who won the 2019 Oscar for Best Achievement in Sound Mixing for Bohemian Rhapsody, mixed the music in 7.1 surround sound with a spatial audio design.
The tour behind the footage
Bowie launched the Isolar II World Tour in March 1978 and played 78 concerts across North America, Europe, Oceania and Asia, in four legs, before it ended that December. The shows leaned on the first two albums of his Berlin Trilogy, Low and "Heroes", on which he took a more experimental direction. Setlists also drew on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Station to Station, Young Americans and Aladdin Sane, among other records.
Performances recorded in the U.S. make up the material on Stage, the live album released while the tour was still under way. They also feed into the 2018 archival release Welcome to the Blackout (Live London '78). Bowie did not mount another full-scale tour until 1983.
The reporting does not say whether Stage will travel beyond Berlin or be released in any other form, and it does not give ticketing details.
Sources
Produced with AI assistance by the editorial team.
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