Early in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1975 film Fox and His Friends, the naive protagonist Franz Biberkopf (played by Fassbinder himself) shows he’s not quite as naive or, at least, not quite as innocent as we may be led to believe through the remainder of the film. Biberkopf, who goes by the nickname Fox, plays the lottery as if it’s some religious ritual, filled with hope and faith that his fortunes will change quickly when change sees it’s fit to come his way. Fretful because he doesn’t have the money to purchase his ticket, Fox carries out a swindle so naturally that he’s surely done it before. Or perhaps Fassbinder is saying this is natural because this is just how humans behave. In either case, Fox enters a flower shop, flirts lightly with the gay florist in order to gain trust and instill desire, and then...
- 1/18/2017
- by Trevor Berrett
- CriterionCast
Award Winning Director Wolfgang Becker (“Good Bye Lenin!”) will open the festival at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre with “Me and Kaminski” bringing outstanding German cinema and its stars to Los Angeles from October 20 to 23rd.
Full Program Line Up Announced with a selection of the best new German, Austrian and Swiss Cinema
Celebrating its 10th year, German Currents features an expanded program including screenings of ten La premieres, conversations with prolific German directors, writers and actors, as well as the return of the free family matinee film screening for local schools.
“Me and Kaminski” starring Daniel Brühl and directed by Wolfgang Becker
2016 has been a successful year for German language cinema, not only in Europe, but across the globe. Beginning on Thursday, October 20th 2016 German Currents will open this year’s 4 day festival with the red carpet event Los Angeles premiere of Wolfgang Becker’s (“Goodbye Lenin”) five-time...
Full Program Line Up Announced with a selection of the best new German, Austrian and Swiss Cinema
Celebrating its 10th year, German Currents features an expanded program including screenings of ten La premieres, conversations with prolific German directors, writers and actors, as well as the return of the free family matinee film screening for local schools.
“Me and Kaminski” starring Daniel Brühl and directed by Wolfgang Becker
2016 has been a successful year for German language cinema, not only in Europe, but across the globe. Beginning on Thursday, October 20th 2016 German Currents will open this year’s 4 day festival with the red carpet event Los Angeles premiere of Wolfgang Becker’s (“Goodbye Lenin”) five-time...
- 10/4/2016
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
When observing its material from something of a remove, it could easily be argued that Fassbinder: To Love Without Demands is a bit drier than its amazing subject deserves. While I don’t wish to spend too much time in a review of someone else’s documentary extolling the virtues of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s massive, emotionally bruising filmography, it’s worth noting the division between those films, many of which are seen herein via clip form, and Christian Braad Thomsen’s document, the film at hand. Being that this is subtitled as his “Personal Recollections,” it’s only natural for the picture to favor his and others’ direct experiences with Fassbinder over anything else; even the most prominent interview with the eponymous figure is Thomsen’s own work. We get this in the “info-dump” style, the sort of documentary filmmaking one might be able to immediately picture: talking-head...
- 4/28/2016
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
New films from Hal Hartley, James Franco, Gus Van Sant among lineup.
Eighteen features - including seven documentaries - have been selected for the Berlinale’s Panorama programme.
Among the selection are new films from Hal Hartley, Doze Niu Chen-Zer, Jk Youn and The Yes Men.
Hartley concludes his filmic trilogy with Ned Rifle while Justin Kelly’s Gus Van Sant-produced debut I Am Michael stars James Franco as a gay activist in the 1980s.
54: The Director’s Cut
USA
By Mark Christopher
With Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek, Mike Myers, Sela Ward, Mark Ruffalo
World premiere
Chorus
Canada
By François Delisle
With Sébastien Ricard, Fanny Mallette, Pierre Curzi, Geneviève Bujold
European premiere
Der letzte Sommer der Reichen (The Last Summer of the Rich)
Austria
By Peter Kern
With Amira Casar, Nicole Gerdon, Winfried Glatzeder
World premiere
Dora oder Die sexuellen Neurosen unserer Eltern (Dora or The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents)
Switzerland / Germany
By Stina Werenfels...
Eighteen features - including seven documentaries - have been selected for the Berlinale’s Panorama programme.
Among the selection are new films from Hal Hartley, Doze Niu Chen-Zer, Jk Youn and The Yes Men.
Hartley concludes his filmic trilogy with Ned Rifle while Justin Kelly’s Gus Van Sant-produced debut I Am Michael stars James Franco as a gay activist in the 1980s.
54: The Director’s Cut
USA
By Mark Christopher
With Ryan Phillippe, Salma Hayek, Mike Myers, Sela Ward, Mark Ruffalo
World premiere
Chorus
Canada
By François Delisle
With Sébastien Ricard, Fanny Mallette, Pierre Curzi, Geneviève Bujold
European premiere
Der letzte Sommer der Reichen (The Last Summer of the Rich)
Austria
By Peter Kern
With Amira Casar, Nicole Gerdon, Winfried Glatzeder
World premiere
Dora oder Die sexuellen Neurosen unserer Eltern (Dora or The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents)
Switzerland / Germany
By Stina Werenfels...
- 12/16/2014
- by andreas.wiseman@screendaily.com (Andreas Wiseman)
- ScreenDaily
DVD Release Date: Aug. 27, 2013
Price: DVD $69.95
Studio: Criterion
R. W. Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder (World on a Wire) refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1971, were influenced by the work of the antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich.
Collected in Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder are five of those fascinating and confrontational works; whether a self-conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling glimpse into the mind of a twenty-something man who would become one of the cinema’s most prolific artists.
Love Is Colder Than Death (1969)
For his debut, Fassbinder fashioned an acerbic,...
Price: DVD $69.95
Studio: Criterion
R. W. Fassbinder's Beware of a Holy Whore (1971)
From the very beginning of his incandescent career, the New German Cinema enfant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder (World on a Wire) refused to play by the rules. His politically charged, experimental first films, made at an astonishingly rapid rate between 1969 and 1971, were influenced by the work of the antiteater, an avant-garde stage troupe that he had helped found in Munich.
Collected in Eclipse Series 39: Early Fassbinder are five of those fascinating and confrontational works; whether a self-conscious meditation on American crime movies, a scathing indictment of xenophobia in contemporary Germany, or an off-the-wall look at the dysfunctional relationships on film sets, each is a startling glimpse into the mind of a twenty-something man who would become one of the cinema’s most prolific artists.
Love Is Colder Than Death (1969)
For his debut, Fassbinder fashioned an acerbic,...
- 6/6/2013
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
German actor best known for his roles in the films of Fassbinder
Filmgoers familiar with the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder will certainly know Günther Kaufmann, who has died of a heart attack aged 64. Kaufmann had parts great and small in more than a dozen of the prolific German director's movies. He was what the Germans call a "Besatzungskind", one of the many children born between 1945 and 1949 as a result of relationships between German women and American soldiers. Kaufmann's black GI father, whom he never knew, returned to the Us before he was born in Munich. According to Fassbinder: "Günther thinks Bavarian, feels Bavarian and speaks Bavarian. And that's why he gets a shock every morning when he looks in the mirror." Kaufmann, whom Fassbinder always called "my Bavarian negro", played an important role in his life.
They first met in the autumn of 1969 on the set of Volker Schlöndorff's television film of Baal,...
Filmgoers familiar with the work of Rainer Werner Fassbinder will certainly know Günther Kaufmann, who has died of a heart attack aged 64. Kaufmann had parts great and small in more than a dozen of the prolific German director's movies. He was what the Germans call a "Besatzungskind", one of the many children born between 1945 and 1949 as a result of relationships between German women and American soldiers. Kaufmann's black GI father, whom he never knew, returned to the Us before he was born in Munich. According to Fassbinder: "Günther thinks Bavarian, feels Bavarian and speaks Bavarian. And that's why he gets a shock every morning when he looks in the mirror." Kaufmann, whom Fassbinder always called "my Bavarian negro", played an important role in his life.
They first met in the autumn of 1969 on the set of Volker Schlöndorff's television film of Baal,...
- 5/15/2012
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Actor best known for her nuanced portrayal of a faded screen idol in Veronika Voss, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
According to the German actor and writer Peter Berling, the most important thing for the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was "to surround himself with people who needed him for their own survival … from the beginning he wanted to create a 'family', something he himself never had". One devoted member of this family was Rosel Zech, who has died of bone cancer aged 69.
Sadly, Veronika Voss (1982), in which Zech became a Fassbinder star, was the director's penultimate film, released less than four months before his death, at the age of 37, of a drug overdose. "I never felt so comfortable with any other director," Zech declared. "We were just at the beginning and had many plans together." One of these was a biopic of the writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg, the uncompleted...
According to the German actor and writer Peter Berling, the most important thing for the director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was "to surround himself with people who needed him for their own survival … from the beginning he wanted to create a 'family', something he himself never had". One devoted member of this family was Rosel Zech, who has died of bone cancer aged 69.
Sadly, Veronika Voss (1982), in which Zech became a Fassbinder star, was the director's penultimate film, released less than four months before his death, at the age of 37, of a drug overdose. "I never felt so comfortable with any other director," Zech declared. "We were just at the beginning and had many plans together." One of these was a biopic of the writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg, the uncompleted...
- 9/5/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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