For one week only runs a retrospective of works by German film, TV and theatre director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. 7 features from a body of 43 films and TV productions are being screened at Artis cinema in Tallinn between February 15th and 21st. What follows is a brief excerpt of a conversation with Estonian director Veiko Õunpuu on the film essence of Fassbinder and the inspiration behind his theatrical debut: an adaptation of Garbage, The City and Death. Now running in Tallinn's NO99 theatre.
What is your earliest Fassbinder memory?
Veiko: I might have seen Fear Eats the Soul, and I was completely puzzled by this. The strange tenderness that he has there in a love story between an old, almost repugnant woman, with a much younger African man in 1970's Germany. It's done with this strange sense of humour. As in most of Fassbinder's films the humour in them is within the characters. The ambivalence, the strangeness of the characters. But the films talk about something of essence. They have an essence about them, making points which need to be made.
Fassbinder has a lot of empathy for his characters, even though these are people who might not be morally superior and usually don't get others sympathy. They usually have problems and can be quite loathsome. What I also like is his immense energetic drive and ability to make so many films. And he seems not take the process or himself too seriously. A capacity to make these films so fast and with so little money, with no reverence for any polished style. Always intriguing in terms of technique and how he composes the shots. The rhythms he uses and the edits. Writing them and directing himself. As I understand it, he worked by controlling everything, but at the same time left space for people to participate. Therefore the actors and the other parties involved became a small cult. He was quite a strong personality.
To my mind he was a fierce and uncompromising moralist, something like the first Christians, who were thrown to the lions.
Why did you choose Garbage, City and Death, never performed in Germany, due to charges of anti-semitism, but produced in Israel in 1999?
Veiko: Well there are just a lot of phony people talking bullshit. It's not an anti-semitic work at all, it can't be. It's completely the other way around. People take up a fight without even realizing what they are fighting about. But why I chose the text? I have been thinking about the theory that Wilhelm Reich was putting forward. How we live in a society which is essentially sadistic and instills in males sadism and females masochism during infancy. In adulthood this is replicated in the societal structure. I felt this play had so much about the same ideas within it. And when it clicked like this I decided this is what I want to do. Wilhelm Reich was right in many ways even though he ended up diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Somehow he was looking at the world and seeing a truth that needed to be said. Another thing Reich was saying is that when a society is sick then the people who are termed ‘mentally ill’ are the ones who are the normal people.
Fassbinder did not achieve much recognition in Germany until he was embraced internationally, after the plaudits for Fear Eats the Soul. Have you felt the same way?
Veiko: No prophet is recognized … what's the saying (laughs) … I'm not so sure if I have made a breakthrough or not. You can't be highly critical of a society and then expect to be appreciated by the society. One is bound to get some criticism in return. But now I have given up with the criticism, I think I will do a Don Quixote next.
Garbage, the City and Death
directed by Veiko Õunpuu.
Premiere 12 February 2010.
Performances: 13/15/18/22/23 February, 8/9/29/30 March and 16/17/22 April
in NO99 theatre
http://www.no99.ee/lavastused.php?nid=50
These are the Rainer Werner Fassbinder films shown in Artis cinema in Tallinn between February 15th and 21st:
MON 15.02 KATZELMACHER (1969)
TUE 16.02 Angst essen Seele auf / Ali: Fear Eats the Soul / HIRM NÄRIB HINGE SEEST (1976)
WED 17.02 Satansbraten / Satan's Brew / SAATANAKEEDUS (1976)
THU 18.02 Chinesisches Roulette / Chinese Roulette / HIINA RULETT (1976)
FRI 19.02 FONTANE - EFFI BRIEST (1974)
SAT 20.02 In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden / In a Year of 13 Moons / 13 KUUD AASTAS (1978)
SUN 21.02 Die Ehe der Maria Braun / The Marriage of Maria Braun / MARIA BRAUNI ABIELU (1979)
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MON 15.02 KATZELMACHER (1969)
Jorgos (Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a Greek immigrant in Germany who encounters the intolerance of the locals against foreign workers. Open hostility turns to violence when he is beaten up by the authoritarian thugs after dating a German woman. Male and female nudity along with hetero and homosexual sex scenes are shown in this searing indictment against prejudice and fascism. This feature took the Prize of International Film Critics at the Mannheim Film Festival in 1969.
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TUE 16.02 Angst essen Seele auf / Ali: Fear Eats the Soul / HIRM NÄRIB HINGE SEEST (1976)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder not only directed Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen Seele auf), but also scripted the film, designed the sets, and produced. Brigitte Mira heads the cast as a lonely German cleaning woman, who enters into an affair with equally lonely--and much, much younger--Moroccan mechanic El Hedi Ben Salem. They marry, despite the shocked, bigoted reactions of those around them. This thinly disguised remake of Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows (cult favorite Sirk was one of Fassbinder's personal heroes) won the international critic's prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
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WED 17.02 Satansbraten / Satan's Brew / SAATANAKEEDUS (1976)
This fast-paced black comedy by wunderkind director Rainer Werner Fassbinder follows the frantic efforts of a starving and confused writer, Walter Kranz (Kurt Raab) to beg, borrow or steal enough money to survive on, and at the same time make some sense of his confusing life. Unable to write enough to keep his publisher's royalty advances coming, he seeks out a woman he imagines is a prostitute and interviews her for material. He is also inspired to utter some poetry, which his brassy, outspoken wife identifies as coming from the famous homosexuality-advocating mystical German poet, Stefan George. This inspires Walter to take a closer look at the "gay scene," and he quickly becomes a sort of celebrity there.
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THU 18.02 Chinesisches Roulette / Chinese Roulette / HIINA RULETT (1976)
Angela is the crippled daughter of two separated but still-feuding parents. In this Rainer Werner Fassbinder film, the wealthy parents are both induced to come to their country vacation house with their lovers in tow. For years, they have tried to make Angela feel guilty for having driven them to seek comfort outside their marriage, though ironically there is some indication that their dalliances may have had a hand in the accident that caused her condition. In this unpleasant milieu, they begin playing a truth-telling game called "Chinese Roulette," which leads to even more distasteful revelations and recriminations.
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FRI 19.02 FONTANE - EFFI BRIEST (1974)
In the nineteenth century, seventeen year old Effi Briest is married to the older Baron von Instetten and moves into a house, that she believes has a ghost, in a small isolated Baltic town. She soon bears a daughter, Annie, and hires the lapsed Catholic Roswitha to look after her. Effi is lonely when her husband is away on business, so she spends time riding and walking along the shore with Major Crampas. Instetten is promoted to Ministerial Councillor and the family moves to Berlin, where Effi enjoys the social life. Six years later, the Baron is given letters from Crampas to Effi that convince him that they had an affair. He feels obliged to challenge Crampas to a duel and banish Effi from the house.
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SAT 20.02 In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden / In a Year of 13 Moons / 13 KUUD AASTAS (1978)
This drama follows the last few days in the life of Elvira (formerly Erwin) Weisshaupt. Years before, Erwin told a co-worker, Anton, that he loved him. "Too bad, you aren't a woman," he replied. Erwin took Anton at his word. Trying to salvage something from the wreckage love has made of his life, he now hopes that Anton will not reject him again.
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Harry Lurcher
jun 14 '09
14 contributions
Heard once that life is too serious to be taken seriously. Poet, promoter, director of creativity, frustrated artist and aspiring human being. In the future will people be good enough sports to look back on us and laugh rather than with anger? In his future hopes to be older and travel with an ark in space. Favourite animal is a dog, called Harry the Lurcher. Now somewhere in space. Believes in re-uniting the thoughts with the feelings.
published • February 16th '10
