SpiderBaby wrote: Sun Nov 18, 2018 7:24 am
Or will they hopefully show up with their edition of Querelle finally? While we are at it, didn't Olive announced the longer cut of The Stationmaster's Wife back in 2010 when Despair and I Only Want You to Love Me was released? What ever happened to that?
Stationmaster's Wife/Bollwieser INDEED was announced. I have no clue what happened.
Again - Querelle is a fascinating beast. There's no journalist who seems intent on grilling Lorenz a bit more on if that cut could potentially ever see a release, if she's working on it or if she can even produce the proof she claims she has...
For some reason Amazon has added new streaming options for Fox and His Friends, Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and Katzelmacher to their video service in the last week and the rights are credited to Arrow Films:
SpiderBaby wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 7:04 am
Querelle is playing on TCM right now with the Criterion logo along with the Janus logo in front. Seems to be the next C release.
There were half a dozen Fassbinders that played on Filmstruck with the Criterion logo that they've yet to release. Of course, I can recall none of them beyond Querelle.
SpiderBaby wrote: Mon Jan 28, 2019 7:04 am
Querelle is playing on TCM right now with the Criterion logo along with the Janus logo in front. Seems to be the next C release.
There were half a dozen Fassbinders that played on Filmstruck with the Criterion logo that they've yet to release. Of course, I can recall none of them beyond Querelle.
The following unannounced Fassbinder films were on Filmstruck:
Effi Briest
Fear of Fear
Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven
Chinese Roulette
Satan’s Brew
Querelle
So, it could be any of those. Though I have noticed an interesting pattern where a film plays on TCM and then gets announced by Criterion a month or two later. Like I'm fairly sure A Brighter Summer Day played on TCM quite a bit before being announced, and then hasn't really played again since. There must be some oddball programming deal between Criterion and TCM to build up hype. If we could access older TCM schedules, we could probably prove this theory.
Finally got around to watching Whity, one of a handful of Fassbinders left unseen, and it's a fun crackpot exercise that plays by Fassbinder's personal logic in the most transparent terms. Fassbinder has always enjoyed amplifying unorthodox ideas to depict an exaggerated version of earnest melodramatic feelings, I believe to get as close to his hypersensitive experience of struggling through life as the medium can offer. This is one of his more playful approaches to that worldview, serving up racial and sexual social friction within the weird Western Musical subgenre, an inherently repelling combination of flavors that already alienates viewers upon delivery. Everyone seems to be wearing goops of makeup except our lead, imbuing an artificiality that he moves in constant opposition to all as the 'other'- and a key interest for me was flip-flopping between these interchangeable perspectives of whether or not he's the only 'normal' character that we should be identifying with, or whether his normalcy is strange when the dominant way of being is eccentric, thus invalidating his existence in objective terms within the internal logic of Fassbinder's milieu.
The opposing forces seem to be a curiosity of Fassbinder's as well, and Hanna Schygulla joins him as another stigmatized character who also shares our core attention with deserved empathy. Is this 'internal logic' mirroring our outside world though, just in a very heightened manner? After all, these two characters are classified social deviants who check the boxes for being other'd: for Fassbinger perhaps a female whore is societally ridiculed on par with a man who swings both ways sexually- at least the gay character remains consistent and positions himself silently passive in the shadows. Fassbinder's bisexuality and unavoidable loudness in character may be symptomatic scarlet letters contributing to the self-concept he's never been shy about feeling extra-burdened by, even against marginalized groups that he perceives thwart his belongingness. A bit like a lone hero in a western, alone against cold landscapes, lawlessness and the black sheep of a family of already segregated individualists. Would Fassbinder dare to see himself as the isolated 'other' through the surrogate of a black man? Nothing would surprise me from this man's pansexual-esque perspective on emotional relatability effacing concrete demographics of identity.
The empty space of nonverbal interactions can get so dragged out at times that they perfectly mimic actual spaghetti westerns' deliberate pace building to two characters getting closer, musically moving to hysterical degrees- especially as they climax with perverse sexual encounters or antithetical fizzles into banal meaninglessness (or, how about a looooong drink from a bottle- just going on a few seconds long enough to be funny before returning to quiet drama). The film is essentially a giant joke that turns up the volume of absurdities, only to convey a familiar tenderness and pathos in between the lines, though not too much to expel us from the magic of the pronounced constructions of craft.
I think WHITY is still too "in" the modus of his early, theater influenced work, but it's very interesting. The entire gothic vampire-drag thing is really intriguing, and Whity just wasting his last bit of water to wash his skin is both an interesting take on race and masculinity.
Anyways: any news on restoration work? ANGST VOR DER ANGST, BOLLWIESER and WILDWECHSEL are still all M.I.A.
I've read that Wildwechsel is unreleasable because the author of the original play hated it and has blocked any further circulation. It seems like MOMA is the only venue that's screened it any time within the last couple of decades (as part of their 2007 retrospective), and that was apparently from their own battered print. Bolwieser has been shown more frequently (e.g. at the 2014 Lincoln Center retrospective), but an Australian screening in 2018 was canceled due to "an unforeseen rights dispute."
Presumably a restoration could still be performed, though obviously they wouldn't get any financial return on such a project if they couldn't then distribute it
Sorry if this has been covered somewhere, but does anyone know if the German Arthaus blu-ray of Martha has English subtitles? Obnoxiously difficult to find these details online
Doesn't look like it. The places I looked did not mention any subtitles at all for Martha, nor is there anything about subtitles on its back cover (at jpc.de).
I'm guessing it was restored? press release doesn't say anything. wonder if Criterion will put it out stateside or not...RWF clearly has a devout enough following they're comfortable releasing the majority of his films they can get their hands on
ryannichols7 wrote: Wed Jan 29, 2025 1:35 pm
I'm guessing it was restored? press release doesn't say anything. wonder if Criterion will put it out stateside or not...RWF clearly has a devout enough following they're comfortable releasing the majority of his films they can get their hands on
I had the German Studio Canal Blu-ray, which was restored a few years ago by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation. As always, it was supervised by Juliane Lorenz, which led to choices in color grading that sometimes look fine and other restorations are a little off. I remember this one looking OK (Chinese Roulette and Eight Hours Don't Make a Day look way too yellow to me but I'm no expert). It's bound to be the same restoration with English subtitles added.
