Film Comment Digital Anthology - Rainer Werner Fassbinder

This digital anthology collects 35 years of analysis of Fassbinder's films and profiles of his closest collaborators, published by Film Comment magazine.

From November/December 1975:

• Manny Farber & Patricia Patterson's mid-career analysis of Fassbinder’s style, highlighting his use of melodrama and artificial constructions, and his (perhaps unintended) stylistic debt to Andy Warhol

• Roger Greenspun on Fist-Right of Freedom (aka Fox and His Friends), which continues a trend of increasing naturalism in Fassbinder's work, containing less camp and more character

• A formalistic analysis of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? by John Hughes, charting Fassbinder’s relationship to modernism and drawing parallels to its practitioners in other media 

• John Hughes & Brooks Riley's interview with Fassbinder, which covers his influences, family history, and the political content of his work

From September/October 1981: George Morris examines five lesser-known films (Jail Bait, Martha, I Only Want You to Love Me, Women in New York, and Satan's Brew), and builds the case for the director as contemporary cinema’s most fascinating visionary

From September/October 1982:

• Eulogy for the filmmaker written by friend Brooks Riley

• Harlan Kennedy's discussion of four late-career Fassbinder films (The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lili Marleen, Lola, and Veronika Voss) and their contrasting heroines

From July/August 1991: Jim Emerson's interview with Hanna Schygulla, Fassbinder’s most frequent and iconic collaborator, who recalls their relationship, the director’s methods and eccentricities

From November/December 2002: Olga Solovieva's consideration of “dressing” in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant in both literal and figurative senses, as its characters don and shed identities like (and through) their clothes

From May/June 2009: Chris Chang on the revolutionary practices of Fassbinder composer Peer Raben, with a look at the complex sound layering at the start of The Third Generation

From May/June 2010: Chuck Stephens's review of Fassbinder’s restored 1973 sci-fi miniseries, a rare genre foray and departure from his melodramas of the period