[2] Both in content as well as in its cinematic approach and structure, The Revenge Of The Dead Indians is a homage to John Cage, paying tribute to one of the most influential American composers of the 20th century.
[14] Lohner portrays Cage in regards to the musical principle that every image, every statement and every scene can entirely stand on its own, complete in itself as its own narrative entity, yet also remain central to the overall structure and phrasing of the film.
[17] Thereby, the filmmaker's attention is focused on “forgotten” landscapes: places which one easily passes and which are located at the roadside and are not popularly touristic, otherwise unnoticed or ignored in daily life.
[18][17] Narratively, The Revenge Of The Dead Indians deals with the major issues that Cage was occupied with: Coincidence and chaos, his buddhist worldview — rejecting to manipulate the world —, art as imitation of nature, and the identity of music and sounds.
[10] Amongst the interview partners are famous personalities such as Heiner Müller, John Zorn, Giorgio Strehler, Iannis Xenakis, Frank Zappa, Yoko Ono, William Forsythe, Alison Knowles, Yehudi Menuhin, Richard Serra, Merce Cunningham, Ellsworth Kelly, Dennis Hopper and Noam Chomsky, talking about their encounters with Cage, the impression his music left on them, and his significance for their own work.
[14] The film's title derives from dramatist Heiner Müller who is interviewed in the film, remarking that John Cage was “the revenge of the dead Indians on European music.”[21] Thereby, he refers to the murdered Native Americans who are a central part of American history but have been pushed aside and ignored ever since: Müller explains that "culture comes from the oppressed, the displaced and has therefore become the unconscious; which rebels, and is the Indian element of Cage.
Concert performances incorporated in the film were recorded live during the "Musicircus" homage at Symphony Space in New York, November 1, 1992, and at the John Cage music festival at the Akademie der Schönen Künste in East Berlin, August 1, 1990.
[10] Furthermore, Lohner and cinematographer Van Carlson filmed in the deserts of New Mexico, in Napa Valley in California, in the European landscapes of France, Italy and Germany, as well as in big cities like Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Milan, Paris, Osaka, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
In this sense, the task within public and private television is subjected to rigid guidelines, and thus is not open to experiments, coincidences or individual initiative.
"[25] In the German newspaper Tageszeitung, critic Birgit Glombitza raved that Lohner's 130-minute-homage to Cage was a "symphony of coincidences" that illuminates the compositional methods of the man whom modern music owed its symbiosis of harmony and chaos to.