Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Biography

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a German film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is one of the most important figures in the New German Cinema. Fassbinder was prolific; in a professional career that lasted less than fifteen years, he completed forty feature length films, two television film series, three short films, four video productions, twenty-four stage plays, and four radio plays. He had tortured personal relationships with the actors and technicians around him who formed a surrogate family. However, his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social outsiders and his hatred of institutionalized violence. He ruthlessly attacked both German bourgeois society and the larger limitations of humanity. Fassbinder died in June 1982 at the age of 37 from a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates. His death has often been cited as the event that ended the New German Cinema movement.

Known For

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

as Eugen

The Marriage of Maria Braun

as Peddler

Veronika Voss

as Kinobesucher (uncredited)

Fox and His Friends

as Franz "Fox" Bieberkopf

Lili Marleen

as Günther Weissenborn (uncredited)

The Merchant of Four Seasons

as Zucker

Beware of a Holy Whore

as Sascha

Love Is Colder Than Death

as Franz

Katzelmacher

as Jorgos

Room 666

as Self