(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Up to 23. The exhibition will be shown in August Fassbinder NOW (in Norwegian Fassbinder access) at Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. The exhibition marks the fact that this year is 70 years since Fassbinder was born, but it has previously been shown in Frankfurt: The catalog on 300 pages is dated 2013 and carries the subtitle "Film and video art".
The exhibition is divided into three parts: Direction books / costumes, films by and about Fassbinder, and finally younger video artists working on the extension of Germany's most famous director after World War II.
Barbara Baum (b. 1944) made costumes for Fassbinder from the filmization of Effi Briest (1972 – 74) and until Fassbinder's early death as an 37 year-old in 1982. The silver lame dress Hanna Schygulla wears at the end of Lili Marleen (1980), the red dress of Barbara Sukowa at the beginning of Lola (1981) as well as a number of other costumes are on display. For those who know the movies, it is of course a recognition and affection value to be able to see the costumes in the original. But this does not contribute to any understanding of Fassbinder's actuality. When Fassbinder's private pinball game and even his leather jacket are on display, the exhibition taps into pure relic worship.
Productive. More interesting then are the directories lent by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, which is led by the filmmaker's last life companion Juliane Lorenz. She has initiated several previous Fassbinder exhibitions: in Berlin in 1992, New York in 1997 and at the Pompidou Center in Paris in 2005. The directories show how detailed Fassbinder's performances about the films were, although he was also open to improvisation and spontaneity . Planning and order needed to keep up the inhumane pace of production, which eventually also took its toll on Fassbinder himself: over 40 films between 1969 and 1982. Fassbinder's productivity became the subject of myth formation early on. Already in 1969, the weekly magazine presented Der Spiegel him as a unique: In two years he had made four films, written five pieces, produced 17 plays and smoked 60 cigarettes a day!
The exhibition presents seven international video artists. Everyone was born between 1969 and 1974 and works in the wake of Fassbinder. For example, Ming Wong from Singapore has dressed up as Petra von Kant in the final scene of Fassbinder's 1972 film, and recreated it in its version. The new Petra speaks broken German: Learn German with Petra von Kant. An entire wall is wallpapered with small pictures of Wong as Petra. In addition, the images are played on a television screen. Does this show Fassbinder's timeliness? The theme i Petra von Kants bitre tårer (1972) is love, jealousy, submission and the urge to own another human being. Fashion designer Petra von Kant (Margit Carstensen) suppresses her employees silent slave Marlene (Irm Hermann) and falls in love with Karin Thimm (Hanna Schygulla). At the end, she gets a breakdown, and lies on the carpet, waiting for Karin to call while she drinks herself. It is this scene that Ming Wong has staged again. Fassbinder's film is hugely stylized, a filmed theater piece. Fassbinder's most faithful co-worker Harry Baer has called the movie "timeless". As a psychological chamber game of hate and love, it is eternally relevant. But we do well without Ming Wong's interpretation. Watch Fassbinder's movie again!
Ballhaus circle. At the beginning of the movie Martha (1973), which is as stylized as Peter von Kant, Fassbinder, in collaboration with cameraman Michael Ballhaus, decided to mark the first scathing encounter between Martha (Margit Carstensen) and Helmuth (Karlheinz Böhm) by letting the camera rotate 360 degrees around them as they pass each other. This gives a nice cinematic rendering of a key scene or a magical moment. And Fassbinder used the technique in the same way Chinese roulette (1976) and other films.
The directories show how detailed Fassbinder's notions about the films were, although he was also open to improvisation and spontaneity.
This effect is the starting point for Runa Islam's contribution to the exhibition. In their contribution Tuin (garden) she makes a deconstructive adaptation of what has become known as the Ballhaus circle in film history. With 16 mm color film, the circular motion is recreated in Martha, which now takes place in a park or garden. In addition, we get to see two digital black and white projections that represent the actors' subjective perspective. This blows up Fassbinder's concept and will showcase the track for the camera's rotation as a narrowing corset. However, this meter reflection on Fassbinder's technique becomes too special to make Fassbinder relevant. Ballhaus has even said that the technique quickly became so popular that he even stopped using it! Also, Fassbinder uses 360 degree rotation around the object even when there are no scaling moments to be highlighted – for example when the camera rotates around the meeting table twice in Lola.
These two examples will work. The contributions of the Dutch Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooji, the Belgian Tom Geens, as well as Maryam Jafri and the Danish Jesper Just also failed to lift Fassbinder out of the 70s and make him relevant to us today.
Germany and history. Fassbinder is still more popular abroad than in Germany. But this exhibition does not focus on Fassbinder's provocative role in German cultural life. The exhibition therefore demonstrates that Fassbinder is still an unpleasant phenomenon. Many documentaries have been made about Fassbinder. I don't just want you to love me. Filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1992) by Hans Günther Pflaum gives a good insight into Fassbinder's thinking and personality through conversations with actors and co-workers. This also applies to the extensive extras in the form of interviews with actors, cameramen and production staff found on many of the DVDs that have come in recent years.
In one of these interviews, the well-known German-Austrian actor Karlheinz Böhm (1928–2014) emphasizes that Fassbinder was neither politically right nor left. But he went in where it happened, he sought out the most flammable problems. And of course, some of the most conflicting in Germany is history. Fassbinder became a kind of chronicler for German post-war history. But through the filmization of Theodor Fontane's novel Effie Briest, through the television series based on Alfred Döblins Berlin Alexanderplatz from the interwar period through Lily Marlen from the war years, he extended the perspective over 100 years back in time.
Lacks concurrency. "Die Wende," the fall of the wall and the settlement of the GDR have come after Fassbinder's death. In 2006, Florian Hencker von Donnersmarcks made the film The Life of Others on Stasis surveillance. It is in the spirit of Fassbinder. And well-known filmmakers in Germany belonging to Fassbinder's generation still have, such as Volker Schlöndorff (b. 1939) and Margarethe von Trotta (b. 1942). Trotta starred in three of Fassbinder's films, and in 1986 made a film about Rosa Luxemburg – something Fassbinder himself had planned before he died. Schlöndorrfs film The silence after the shot (2000) is based on the terrorist Inge Viett's life, just to name a few of many possible examples of Fassbinder perspectives in recent German film. That this is completely missing from the exhibition on Fassbinder's topicality is also its biggest weakness. And if one goes to Fassbinder's influence in other countries, the list of names gets even longer.
Fassbinder shows that every victim is a potential executioner.
Fassbinder made a breakthrough with his first feature film in Berlin in 1969, Liebe is colder than Tod (Love is colder than death). Most of Fassbinder's favorite themes are already present. Crime and prostitution are at the center, as are triangle dramas, betrayals and homosexuality. In various variations, these themes recur in most of his films. Here Fassbinder plays himself, Hannah Schygulla and Ulli Lommel. Fassbinder's first feature film was a pure kitchen countertop production. Lommel later stated that Fassbinder had no staff: "Die Crew war der Lohmann." The cameraman Dieter Lohmann was the only one on the set besides the actors! The actors dressed themselves, and Lommel had to buy his own gangster hat in a clothing store. Still, the film came on the Berlin in 1969. Among other things, Fassbinder was criticized for its use of a still camera. The uncompromising Fassbinder responded by making it even more immobile in his next film Katzelmacher (1969)
"Generation obedient". Fassbinder themed phenomena such as exploitation, power, petty bourgeoisie and political extremism, but it is typical that he never operated with unambiguous villains and heroes. In his second feature film Katzelmacher is not the Greek foreign worker who gets knocked out at the end of the film, without lies: he even despises Turks in a racist way. IN Mother Kisses Ascension (1975), German communists and terrorists are emphatically undressed. Fassbinder was also criticized by gays for the film Neverett of freedom (1974), in which middle-class gays exchange a subclass gay (played by Fassbinder himself) who has won the lottery. Fassbinder was not politically correct and equipped with ideological leaflets. He stylizes petty-bourgeois and claustrophobic spaces that stink of double morality in a society characterized by abuse of power, immaturity and conformism.
Those born about the time Fassbinder died are in Norway called "Generation obedient". The downside of youth conformism is depression and nerve tablets. Maybe a dose of Fassbinder could also be good? In his book on Fassbinder and Germany from 1996, which has been published in an expanded German edition 2012, Thomas Elsaesser writes that Fassbinder's actuality consists in his theme of the victims. Fassbinder is a corrective to a society where everyone gradually feels like victims. And the battle for victim status is getting harder: We are not seen, understood, taken into account! Fassbinder shows that every victim is a potential executioner. Therefore, one should not be too generous with compassion. We get no rehabilitation of the victim at Fassbinder, a conciliatory realization of "equality". But he reveals better than any other recent filmmaker systematically how social definition, asymmetric power, sadism and submission are part of reality – even in groups that understand themselves as an alternative to existing.
The exhibition Fassbinder JETZT – Film und Videokunst opened in May and runs until August 23 at Martin-Gropius Bau, Niederkirchnerstrasse 7, Berlin. Organizer is the Deutsches Film Institute in collaboration with the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation.
Tjønneland is a professor of Nordic literature.
eivind.tjonneland@nor.uib.no
