FASSBINDER FEBRUARY -Webster University is Hosting a 4-Film Rainer Werner Fassbinder Retrospective Next Month

By Tom Stockman | January 11, 2021

Webster University Film Series has become the location for many national tours of international cinema, often acting as the only such venue in Missouri. The Series is host to speakers and visiting artists who address the pertinent issues in films presented. In an effort to further integrate film with education, the Film Series provides workshops with artists and experts.

As part of the Film Series virtual Speaker Series, Fassbinder February focuses on the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, the prolific LGBTQ+ film director of 1970s West Germany. Once a week, all throughout February, a guest speaker will give a talk on a different film of the trailblazing director. Each film is available on popular streaming services like The Criterion Channel, HBO Max, and/or Amazon Prime. Watch each ahead of time and then join The Webster University University Film Series all month long for interesting and thought-provoking discussions on the many works that focus on politics, gender, sexuality, race, social stigma, and so much more. For more information about Fassbinder February, go HERE

Here’s the Fassbinder February line-up:

Thursday, February 4 at 7:00pm – Joshua Ray, film critic for The Lens, will discuss Ali: Fear Eats the Soul 

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul has Fassbinder going full-Sirk in this story of an older white woman, Emmi (frequent Fassbinder collaborator Brigitte Mira), who falls in love with a Moroccan immigrant half her age, Ali (El Hedi ben Salem, Fassbinder’s lover at the time). Fear Eats the Soul works with many themes that Fassbinder ceaselessly explored, but it also retains an easy, surface-level likeability on account of its two charming leads and incisive exploration of how people behave when they need other people.

Thursday, February 11 at 7:00pm – Cait Lore, film critic for The Lens, will discuss The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Long one of Fassbinder’s best-known and -loved films, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant looks at a poisonous queer romance between the titular Petra (Margit Carstensen), a fashion designer, and Karin Thimm (enduring German legend Hanna Schygulla), a potential model. Beautifully shot by Michael Ballhaus, who after shooting over a dozen of Fassbinder’s films was hired by and became a frequent collaborator of Martin Scorsese’s, Petra continues to be a significant cinematic touchstone, referenced by filmmakers such as Olivier Assayas and Peter Strickland, and even the American indie rock band The Magnetic Fields. 

February 18th at 7p.m., Pete Timmermann, director of the Webster University Film Series, will discuss In a Year with 13 Moons

A howl at the unpleasantness of being alive perhaps unmatched in all of cinema, Fassbinder made In a Year with 13 Moons in the wake of the suicide of his lover Armin Meier. Our main character is Elvira (frequent Fassbinder collaborator Volker Spengler), a transwoman whose love is misplaced and who endures physical and emotional beatings at an unendurable rate. Keenly important in understanding Fassbinder’s worldview, and one of his very best films besides (a high bar to cross, when you’re as reliable as Fassbinder was), potential viewers should approach In a Year with 13 Moons with caution, not least of which for a scene that was shot in a real slaughterhouse. 

On February 25th at 7p.m., Robert Hunt, recovering film critic, will discuss The Third Generation

Too overlooked by modern Fassbinder fans, The Third Generation is a comedy/drama/crime film hybrid wherein a group of incompetent radicals kidnap an industrialist and are in turn used as pawns by the West German government. Featuring the Fassbinder gang we’ve come to love over the course of this series—Schygulla, Carstensen, Spengler—this time joined by such international superstars as Udo Kier (Flesh for Frankenstein, Dogville, Bacurau, you name it), Jacques Rivette favorite Bulle Ogier, and Lemmy Caution himself, Eddie Constantine.