RW Fassbinder: C/D, S/D, Y/DA-Y/DA

World On A Wire playing at LACMA this weekend.

World on a Wire - Not awesome but really good.

Also caught a screening of 'Bitter Tears...' a few weeks ago, that was awesome for the soundtrack choices alone.

I am going to see WOAW. Really good is good enough, plus I am LACMA member now.

Also not sure if this is still happening, but at one point Albert Serra was talking about making a Fassbinder Biopic in which he played RW. Sounded like it could be...interesting!:
http://www.viennale.at/cgi-bin/page.pl?id=3922;lang=en

great essay over at lareviewofbooks.org about world on a wire by someone who worked on it. would love to see this movie!

So World On A Wire was good. Far too long, probably, but compelling. There was tension in the audience between folks who were laughing at the camp and people who wanted to take it more seriously - one older cinephile shouted down a bunch of yukking hipsters with "this isn't a fucking comedy!!!"

Beautiful use of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross" which has me now listening to that track all morning.

"All the exteriors were shot in Paris because they were the most modern buildings in those days,"

Ah this explains a lot. I was trying to figure out which german city it could be!

The restoration was very nice, some fuzziness which I guess is as a result of 16mm being blown up to 35?

Fear of Fear tonight.

Getting to see W.o.a.W. this weekend.

Restored print of Despair making the rounds. Never really comes up as essential Fassbinder but why the hell not.

Anyone like Alexander Kluge? Saw a film by him at the Tate yesterday (the screening was plaged by issues with subtitles and gaps due changes of reels, i think?)

Anyhow,The Female Patriot will be hard to beat as a new discovery this year. All about the repression/cultural amnesia that sets in post-war Germany (shown to coincide with the Richter exhibition that ended yesterday). This is an issue that Fassbinder tackled in Third Generation.

Complex in the way it was put together. It is centred around a German history teacher's attempts to compile material so that she can teach more accurate, or 'better'/less repressed history classes as oposed to what is prescribed in the curriculum. But 'centred' in the loosest way possible. It often spends periods qhere it goes into pure Montage (her compilation of materials and what she finds) as per Chris Marker, then it will have short dramatic scenes (a parent complains to the teacher about how she is warping his son's mind; teachers debating her 'wrong' methods). The commentary to this montage has this fairly tight script, but it is narrated by a (I kid you not) knee (that's the body part) that ws hacked off a soldier in 1944. The knee goes into all sorts of essay like matter, a very striking bit on the brothers Grimm and their compilation of fairy tales (on a section about 'wishing' = as in a people's wish for impossible victories in bloody wars), so the narrative can then switch from an interview to an enthusiast of those fairy tales. He comes across rather creepily about them.

Anyway this film also has a documentary like session where the history teacher (who is actually an actress, btw) goes to a German Party conference and haggles delegates to change educational policy, to much bemusement. Kluge can go from shooting grainy B&W as in the party conference section to actual gorgeous elegiac shots of, say, trees hit by breeze and the winter snow, so there is a style here, too.

I didn't mind the somewhat trying screening because its quite dense and would need a couple of viewings to get a handle on it. I think the NFT need to pull their finger out and screen a season of his films.

saw it years ago in a film class where we also watched 'yesterday girl' and 'brutality in stone' (the latter is kind of a german complement to 'night and fog' iirc)

World on a Wire at Doc Films this Saturday.

tried 2 watch Despair last night, oof it's a mess

saw world on a wire a couple months ago and liked it, very paranoid

Despair is one of his best films!

i think thats quite a challop, but id love to read why u think so!

Despair is good, not one of his best. If he'd lived wonder if he'd have done a lot more lit adaps like this, Alezanderplatz, WoaW.

What's your favorite? Mine (of the ones I've seen) is probably In a Year With 13 Moons

mine is 'ali: fear eats the soul', tho ive only seen 5 or 6

will buckle down & watch alexanderplaz sometime in near future prob

13 Moons up there along w/ Fox and His Friends, Lola, Fear Eats the Soul and Alexanderplatz. Closely followed by Merchant of the Four Seasons, Petra von Kant and a few i'm forgetting.

btw his secretary-heir-wife says he preferred that ppl watch Alexanderplatz in 2 big chunks.

that's how i did it!

yah i read that, im going to try!

ooh, forgot about Martha. That might be tied with 13 Moons.

In fact, back in the day I would tape Twin Peaks every week, then watch 5 or 6 hours at a time. xp

Still never seen "Martha" :(

Never really been able to get into "Merchant otFS" tbh

My favourite is Lola followed by Fox & His Friends. Despair is very much in the vein of his later films, just really well crafted with amazing cinematography and use of sound. I haven't seen it for a few years so can't really back up my comment properly, but I generally prefer the later Fassbinder films (around 1977/78 onwards) rather than the stuff before - Merchant of the Four Seasons bored me to tears, so that might explain why I enjoy it more than others.

Been watching In a Year With 13 Moons: devastating - cert top 5.

I think the use of sound in Despair was the best thing about it, and the English-Germanic accent he gets his actors is kinda fun and novel. But for me he is so much better at dealing with that irreparable loss of identity through love - and he sets it up as something that people can't give, or a thing which doesn't simply exist in two people at the same time and for one another: which is why Ali, Petra Von Kant, In a Year.. really do it for me. The amazing thing is he can also introduce something from outside of that world in a v convincing manner (immigration, Germany's past) to all these chamber melodramas, and even better that they are not there to provide any kind of relief either, but it does tilt the balance between suffocation and exhiliration, maybe?

Haven't seen Lola or Fox... yet, so Third Generation and Veronika Voss are my other faves.

so this recently DVD-ized sci-fi film of his, how is it

cuz the youtube trailer looks pretty awesome, just on a visual level.

link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URq7m3-SOtA

it is very good tho i'm not sure i'd rank it among his best

LORD I kneel and offer you
myyyy WORD on a WIRE

I'm coming at it more from the "fan of this particular era of sci-fi" and less a "fan of Fassbinder" angle. Cuz I couldn't bear the majority of Berlin Alexanderplantz.

World on a Wire was REALLY good, absolutely gorgeous visually and quite fun in its campy paranoia. kinda unnecessarily drawn out with an irrelevant subplot and maybe a few too many pointless conversations but in general very enjoyable.

WOAW is very, very talky.

Have you seen The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant?

WOAW has good Corvette porn amongst the chat.

I have and enjoyed it

xpost

i always get that mixed up with capra's 'bitter tea of general yen.'

still unavailable on DVD alas!

Going to see WOAW at the New Beverly tonight.

RIP Günther Kaufmann, muse-lover who acted in 14 RWF films

http://www.dw.de/dw/article/0,,15945872,00.html

That whole thing about him falsely confessing to killing the accountant is pretty crazy.

aw, r.i.p.

wow @ the false confession!!

yeah, didn't know anything about that, whoa.

I forgot to wish RWF a happy birthday ;_;

Hoberman on the limbo of RWF's American fate:

http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/the-single-antidote-to-thoughts-of-20120628

watching Berlin Alexanderplatz.

fuck, it's good.
the alination vs. the pathetic search for (distorded) warmth and tenderness is shown brilliantly by Fassbinder.
oh, and the use of lightning and space.
oh, and the acting.

great Hoberman piece, thanks for the link