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More than 20 years after adapting a Rainer Werner Fassbinder play called “Waters Drops on Burning Rocks” into a movie, François Ozon has made this gender-flipped adaptation of one of Fassbinder’s greatest films, “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” in an attempt to understand Fassbinder’s real-life struggle with the power plays of love.

Fassbinder’s “Petra von Kant” was shot very quickly on a very low budget, and he used a lot of long takes; every camera movement in Fassbinder’s version of this material feels so ultra-controlled that watching it is like getting tied up in an S & M dungeon or getting slowly strangled by a python. Ozon shoots his own “Peter von Kant” with a casualness that can feel frivolous, and he uses very conventional short takes for shot/reverse shot conversations.

Fassbinder’s “Petra von Kant” revolves around a lesbian love triangle that consists of...

François Ozon, the prolific and provocative French director who won the Berlinale’s 2018 Golden Bear Award with “By the Grace of God,” is returning to the festival with “Peter von Kant” which will world premiere on opening night. A twist on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cult film “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” Ozon’s movie has Denis Menochet playing the tormented filmmaker, opposite Isabelle Adjani, who stars as his muse. Like the original film, “Peter von Kant” is about a film about love, jealousy and domination. It’s Ozon’s sixth movie in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Ozon’s Berlin films include 2000’s “Water Drops on Burning Rocks,” another adaptation of a Fassbinder work, and “8 Women,” which won the Silver Bear 20 years ago. The director discussed his artistic ambition for the “Peter von Kant” with Variety.

This is your second Fassbinder-based project. Why is Fassbinder...

Following on the heels (and somewhat novelty) of art-film director biopics Pasolini and Godard Mon Amour comes Enfant Terrible, which spans fifteen years in the life of the notorious Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Breathlessly running through a multitude of his films and strained interpersonal relationships in the span of 134 minutes, the film feels more concerned with hitting the major beats of a Wikipedia page than actually creating a fully formed cinematic character. À la David Fincher’s own highly inert showbiz-tale misfire Mank, one wonders what the specific point of this actually was in the first place.

Spanning from his early days in Munich’s avant-garde theatre to pathetic final moments on earth, the banalization of the great director and monstrous man’s life can’t help feeling like something of an insult. With a life dedicated to cinema, churning out three to five films per year, Fassbinder still found the...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSThe 30 films comprising the main slate of this year's New York Film Festival have been announced, including Alfonso Cuarón's autobiographical, Mexico-set film Roma, Mariano Llinás's fourteen-hour "adventure in scale and duration" La Flor, and Alex Ross Perry's '90s rockstar melodrama Her Smell. "The unifying thread is their bravery," says Festival Director Kent Jones. "The bravery needed to fight past the urge to commercialized smoothness and mediocrity that is always assuming new forms." Festival president Marco Solari and Vice President Carla Speziali of the Locarno Film Festival—which is currently ongoing until August 11—have agreed to sign a pledge "ensuring gender equality and inclusion in programming". The initiative was organized by members of the Swiss Women’s Audiovisual Network (Swan), including filmmaker Ursula Meier, and joins a number of pledges to...

After taking a metatextual look at Jean-Pierre Léaud’s legacy with perhaps his most acclaimed film yet, The Death of Louis Xiv, Albert Serra will be turning his sights on another cinematic icon for his next feature. The divisive Catalan filmmaker is preparing a fall shoot for his new film Personalien, which will capture a specific moment in the life of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Cineuropa reports.

Starring Lluis Serrat and Xavier Grataós, the film will capture the prolific German director, albeit not during a film shoot but rather during the staging of a Berlin-set play as he confronts his ambitions and personal demons. Fassbinder, who died in 1982 at the age of 37 from a drug overdose, begin his career with work in the theater, mounting over a dozen plays alongside the 40+ films/series he directed.

See Also: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 10 Favorite Films

Ahead of a likely 2019 premiere, check out the synopsis and first images below.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder made more than 40 features in his 37 years on this planet, 23 of which starred Hanna Schygulla. The two first met in their early 20s when they were attending acting school in Munich, hitting it off instantly: “It suddenly became crystal clear to me that Hanna Schygulla would one day be the star of my films,” the New German Cinema stalwart wrote. “Maybe even something like their driving force.”

Schygulla was recently interviewed by the Guardian on the eve of an extensive BFI retrospective dedicated to Fassbinder, referring to herself as “one of the survivors” of the “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” and “The Marriage of Maria Braun” director.

Read More: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Top 10 Favorite Films

“He had a strong smell about him,” she recalls. “He smelled how he looked. Like a spotty rebel filled with angst.” Fassbinder, who died of an overdose in 1982, cast the actress in his debut film.

At long last, a worthy digital transfer has been granted the rather grim and horrific Tenderness of the Wolves, an obscure title from the extensive universe of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, here serving as producer. The fourth title assembled under Fassbinder’s production company Tango-Film, Ulli Lommel takes on directorial duty for what stands as the his most notable title. But Lommel’s contributions take a back seat to leading star and screenwriter Kurt Raab. Both members of Fassbinder’s extensive cinematic troupe, having starred in 1969’s Love is Colder Than Death, along with several future affiliations, the film’s production history proves to have its own potent elements dictating the final memorable outcome.

Padded out with a ton of notable Fassbinder faces, it’s a wonder this title isn’t more well-known, even as a cult favorite. But its explicit homosexual content, derided as harmful and negative at the time,...

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Germany, 1972

“Fassbinder is Petra von Kant.” So says frequent star and muse Hanna Schygulla as she discusses Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s working methods and his identification with his characters, both male and female. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is a notable case in point. Based on Fassbinder’s own complicated relationship with Günther Kaufmann, the genders are reversed for what became this tale of passion and despair between a successful fashion designer and the younger beauty who enters and upends her personal and professional life. Originally written for the stage, specifically for Margit Carstensen, who would take on the title role in the play and film, Bitter Tears is a fascinating examination of sexual intensity and infatuation gradually undercut by acrimony and deceit.

Though Fassbinder’s play was generally unsuccessful, he nevertheless moved full...

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,...

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,...

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...

With Insignificance (1985) out from Criterion last week (see the roundup), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) opening at Film Forum in New York tomorrow and, in the UK, Don't Look Now (1973) out on Blu-ray on July 4, following the BFI retrospective in March, there's a Nicolas Roeg mini-revival going on.

Writing about Insignificance and The Man Who Fell to Earth for Artforum, Darrell Hartman argues, "Past is present in the cinema of Nicolas Roeg. To simply call those extratemporal sequences that punctuate his work 'flashbacks' is to downplay the role that images of what came before play in his films. Such 'digressive' framing devices are, in many ways, the emotional and visual keystones of Roeg's work. In his heyday, from the 1970s until the mid-80s, Roeg was known as an envelope pusher. He employed nonlinear editing as part of an ambitious attempt to bridge space and time, cutting frames together...

Never heard of this, but maybe one of you out there has.

Courtesy of the Afro-Europe International Blog…

Synopis: 17-year old Leroy (Alain Morel) is German - and black. The son of a black eccentric inventor (Günther Kaufmann) and a progressive white mother (Eva Mannschott) who works for the local government. Leroy lives in Berlin, wears a big afro, but prefers Mozart to Hip Hop. Leroy’s friends are outsiders as well – Dimi is Greek and Achmed is Palestinian. However they all have girlfriends except Leroy. When cute Eva (who’s white) falls in love with him, nobody is as surprised and confused as Leroy himself.

But first love is not always sweet. Eva’s family turns out to be right wing extremists. They even named their Australian parrots after two of Hitler’s generals, and Eva’s five skinhead brothers are longing to kick Leroy’s butt asap.

However,...