Fassbinder

Started by pookiethecat, June 05, 2003, 10:49:24 PM

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

New Feeling

I have been obsessed with Fassbinder's work since I saw Berlin Alexanderplatz almost 4 years ago.   Last year I went nuts and watched virtually all of them that are available on DVD, I'm up to 30.  But I think the most important one is one of the least discussed.   

GERMANY IN AUTUMN

This is a feature length omnibus made up of shorts by a dozen filmmakers, all exploring the terrorist situation in Germany that year.  Or something of the sort.  Fassbinder's segment is first, and in it he plays himself, and the co-stars are his mother and his lover, also playing themselves.  It is essentially a self-portrait on film.  There was a time when you could watch this on Youtube but it has been gone for a while.  I have luckily obtained a VHS copy and obsessed over it. 

a serious question for xixaxers:

Is there any other movie like this?  One where all the major characters are playing themselves, and it is essentially based on real life, maybe even a mixture of dramatized scenes and documentary?  I have been racking my brain and can't come up with anything.  The closest is Larry David or Woody Allen or something. But obviously not very close.  I think Karistrami's movie Close-Up fits the bill but I haven't seen it.

Anyway I have become obsessed with this mini-genre and would love it if anyone could come up with similar examples.  I am working this idea into a series of projects right now and would really like to be aware of anything that comes close.       


w/o horse

You're not describing a genre you're describing an affordable method of filmmaking.  Except maybe that video diary kind of genre, like Tarnation.

Wenders uses it a lot, like in Lightning Over Water where he plays himself visiting Nicholas Ray, who is played by Nicholas Ray.  Or in Toky Ga where he plays himself vising Tokyo, which is played by Tokyo.  Or in A Trick of Light, where he and his filmmaking crew play himself and his filmmaking crew visiting the daughter of these early German film pioneers, who is played by the daughter of these early German film pioneers.

I think of Wenders because he so conspicuously blends reality and fiction.

You also see it a ton in student films.  The Duplass brothers kind of approach it.  And basically any documentary filmmaker making a film in which they are starring, like even Michael Moore or Werner Herzog.

Other people probably have other examples.  Unless I'm confused about what exactly was unique about what he did.  Because I don't see what was unique.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

New Feeling

Thanks for all those, I haven't seen any of them except for Moore/Herzog, which are very specifically documentaries in all the cases I'm aware of, and Tarnation, which I would say the same about, even though it is more experimental. 

As far as I can tell none of those Wenders films fit in.  It looks like they are mostly pure documentaries, and at the very least they seem to have a very specific subject matter.  Again, I haven't seen them so I don't really know.  It doesn't seem like Nick Ray or Tokyo are really "playing" themselves so much as being themselves.  Like I say I could be wrong. 

The thing that I find so unique about the Fassbinder example is that not only is he seemingly dramatizing scenes from his life almost exactly like he would his other movies, but that the scenes all seem to be snapshots of some of his most private moments.  It is as if he is just randomly dropping into moments of his own life and seeing the drama in them.  The film was supposed to have a theme but it seems more specifically to be about Fassbinder than anything else, though certainly it ties in to the whole Germany in Autumn project. 

So what I'm really looking for is something more like a Woody Allen movie if Woody Allen was playing Woody Allen for once, Mia ws playing Mia, etc.  Which is what I think Germany In Autumn is like, only with fewer jokes.

and the real crux of the matter, now that I think of it, is that it is "adapted" from real life using the real locations, people, and based on real events, only re-enacted instead of lived.  Now Fassbinder's doesn't ever state the claim that it is indeed based on real events, but the feeling I get from it is that this is the place it's coming from.  And this is the kind of thing I want to see more of.

Like I say, Close-up still seems like it fits the bill, but I don't think any of these picks really get there.  I'll let you know when I see them.   

Quote from: w/o horse on September 08, 2008, 07:39:01 PM
You're not describing a genre you're describing an affordable method of filmmaking.  Except maybe that video diary kind of genre, like Tarnation.

Wenders uses it a lot, like in Lightning Over Water where he plays himself visiting Nicholas Ray, who is played by Nicholas Ray.  Or in Toky Ga where he plays himself vising Tokyo, which is played by Tokyo.  Or in A Trick of Light, where he and his filmmaking crew play himself and his filmmaking crew visiting the daughter of these early German film pioneers, who is played by the daughter of these early German film pioneers.

I think of Wenders because he so conspicuously blends reality and fiction.

You also see it a ton in student films.  The Duplass brothers kind of approach it.  And basically any documentary filmmaker making a film in which they are starring, like even Michael Moore or Werner Herzog.

Other people probably have other examples.  Unless I'm confused about what exactly was unique about what he did.  Because I don't see what was unique.

JG

the most recent example that almost fits your criteria is momma's man, which stars the director's parents as the parents of the protagonist, but i don't know enough about azazel jacobs or his family to draw the conclusions that you are able to draw about fassbinder and his. what tells you that these are snapshots of fassbinder's life other than the fact that they look and feel like they might be? frownland was one of the best movies of last year and it featured a protagonist who was essentially playing a more extreme version of himself, but if ronnie bronstein didn't tell me that i might've guessed otherwise.

also, you might like mike leigh.

New Feeling

well, that's the main thing.  They look and feel like it.  And that is the way the film is structured.  There is no story per se, only scenes of life related to certain themes.  The extremely personal nature of some of those scenes, particularly the ones of domestic dispute with his lover Armin, combined with the overall structure and dead-seriousness of the piece, lead me to believe that this is the case.  It's as if Fassbinder was asked to explore some themes, and saw them quite readily in his own private life.  Now while I still have no idea that this is in fact based on scenes from his life, the film suggests the idea to me, and that idea as I see it is the most amazing thing around, and I still believe that it has almost never been successfully attempted by anyone else. 

New Feeling

also, I have seen Frownland, a singular experience, and if the guy who was the star had made the movie I think it would've come very close to what I'm looking for.  Unfortunately he didn't. 

and yeah I love Mike Leigh to pieces but he hasn't done this shit either far as I know. 

w/o horse

What you're talking about is really incredible.  I'm being serious because a lot of times my friends and I will talk about the difficulty in translating intensely autobiographical material to the inherently sensationalizing medium of film.  I think you're narrowing the definition to purposely ignore logical allowances for ability and potential but I think if more films could be made under the conditions you're describing it'd be awesome.  It'd extend the meaning of film.  And although it's not exactly what you're meaning, Robert Kramer's Milestones attempts the same (making the aforementioned allowances but presenting it completely similar to what you're meaning).
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

New Feeling

I agree completely and I'm extremely glad you feel this way.  I'll make mine and you make yours and we'll meet at Cannes 2009!

w/o horse

You know I think it's what Cassavetes wanted to do, and I think what he did was radically close for his time/place.  His intentions were there - probably if he and his core group of collaborators hadn't been actors they would have really mined deeper, but because they approached filmmaking from an actor's perspective they thought of character building.  His intentions were also realism and authentic depiction.

Kent MacKenzie's The Exiles is another film like Milestones, except even closer to what we're talking about.  If MacKenzie himself had been in the film it would have been exactly what you're asking for.  What he and his friends attempted was the creation of one of their actual singles days over the course of a week's shooting.  You can see in the credits (at IMDb too) that they were playing themselves.

And Lightning Over Water does fit this.  Maybe not the others mentioned in that previous post, but Lightning Over Water does.
Raven haired Linda and her school mate Linnea are studying after school, when their desires take over and they kiss and strip off their clothes. They take turns fingering and licking one another's trimmed pussies on the desks, then fuck each other to intense orgasms with colorful vibrators.

New Feeling

I just re-watched My Dinner With Andre for the first time in a decade and what an amazing movie!  Anyway, it is an obvious example of the sort of thing I'm talking about.  It of the one-scene variety. 

analogzombie

Criterion to release Fasbsinder's World on a Wire on Feb. 21

World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, as well as a flavor entirely his own, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of a reluctant action hero, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the weird world of tomorrow from one of cinema's kinkiest geniuses.

DISC FEATURES

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Fassbinder's "World on a Wire": Looking Ahead to Today, a fifty-minute documentary about the making of the film by Juliane Lorenz
New interview with German-film scholar Gerd Gemünden
New English subtitles
Trailer for the 2010 theatrical release
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Ed Halter
"I have love to give, I just don't know where to put it."

mogwai

I've been thinking of buying "The Merchant of Four Seasons". Is it any good?

classical gas

^  That movie should be arriving in the mail any day now.  So I hope it's good.

New Feeling

Merchant of Four Seasons is a good one.   :yabbse-thumbup:

squints

Quote from: analogzombie on November 19, 2011, 09:00:24 PM
Criterion to release Fasbsinder's World on a Wire on Feb. 21

World on a Wire is a gloriously paranoid, boundlessly inventive take on the future from German wunderkind Rainer Werner Fassbinder. With dashes of Stanley Kubrick, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip K. Dick, as well as a flavor entirely his own, Fassbinder tells the noir-spiked tale of a reluctant action hero, Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), a cybernetics engineer who uncovers a massive corporate conspiracy. At risk? (Virtual) reality as we know it. Originally made for German television, this recently rediscovered, three-and-a-half-hour labyrinth is a satiric and surreal look at the weird world of tomorrow from one of cinema's kinkiest geniuses.

DISC FEATURES

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Fassbinder's "World on a Wire": Looking Ahead to Today, a fifty-minute documentary about the making of the film by Juliane Lorenz
New interview with German-film scholar Gerd Gemünden
New English subtitles
Trailer for the 2010 theatrical release
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Ed Halter


this is great news, i read an article about this show a while ago and have been desperately trying to find a copy of it anywhere. Super excited.
"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche