1980 miniseries directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

In an attempt to escape 19th-century poverty, eight farmers and day laborers attack a prince's money transport in the Hessian Hinterland.

Hans is a street fruit peddler and born loser. His choice of career upsets his bourgeois family, causing him to turn to drinking and violence. After recovering from a debilitating heart attack, his business finally begins to take off. However, the more he becomes a credit to his family, the more depressed he becomes.

Ricky returns to Munich from Vietnam and is promptly hired as a contract killer.

Can a small group of people start a proletarian revolution, asks the "Black Monk" in a leather jacket? The medieval shepherd, Hans Boehm, claims to have been called by the Virgin Mary to create a revolt against the church and the landowners. The "Black Monk" suggests that he would have more success if he dressed up Johanna and had her appear as the Virgin Mary.

A documentary about Fassbinder and the early years of the legendary Antiteater, the group he was a member/leader of. You can here see and hear some of the actors he was going to use in his movies for the next years. The movie shows rehearsals for his play "The Coffeehouse," which also became a television movie, and you can watch unique footage from the 19th Film Festival in Berlin (1969) where "Love is Colder Than Death" was shown. As told in this documentary, his first feature movie was given a cold shoulder by many of the journalists and visitors at the festival. You can in "End of the Commune" watch Fassbinder and actor Ulli Lommel walk out on stage after the opening of "Love is Colder Than Death,” while a man in the audience is shouting "Out with the director!” In this documentary, Fassbinder also talks a lot about his father, who was a respectable doctor.

A beautiful woman, Supergirl Francesca Farnese, appears out of nowhere on a Bavarian highway. She wears only an orange jumpsuit and wants to go to Washington. Playboy Charly first takes her to Lake Starnberg, where she meets best-selling author Evers. He immediately leaves his wife and travels with Francesca to Spain, where he negotiates a project with the American film producer Polonsky. No one remains unimpressed by the mysterious beauty. Supergirl remains elusive— she quickly disappears again, leaving behind a warning to the inhabitants of Earth that an attack from outer space is imminent...

Three sequences are linked together in this short film by Straub; the first sequence is a long tracking shot from a car of prostitutes plying their trade on the night-time streets of Germany; the second is a staged play, cut down to 10 minutes by Straub and photographed in a single take; the final sequence covers the marriage of James and Lilith, and Lilith’s subsequent execution of her pimp, played by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. "The film is a look entirely at Western decadence" - Jean-Marie Straub.

1974 film by Lothar Lambert

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof.

A very stylized TV version of the Fassbinder play. The set consists of a few pieces of furniture in front of a large screen on which coastal scenery is back projected. Geesche is a nineteenth-century woman who wants to have a mind of her own. She defies convention and will do anything to achieve her freedom from oppression by her family and friends.

1990 film directed by Ulli Lommel

After his release from prison, ex-convict Franz Walsch finds his way back into the Munich criminal underworld. His attentions focus upon two women, Joanna and Margarethe, as well as upon Günther, his friend who earlier shot his brother.

A tramp finds a gun lying in the street.

Theo, Marite, and Franz cannot make any money selling magazines door to door, so they try a little robbery.

1970 Film directed by Volker Schlöndorff

When is a Western not really a Western? When it’s directed by Fassbinder! WHITY is only my sixth film from the so-called German wunderkind: I admire Fassbinder for his prolific and versatile output, though I’ve yet to be won over completely by a film of his; frankly I was hoping this would prove to be the one – but, as it turned out, I couldn’t have been more wrong! For the record, I’ve got four more titles from him to watch: still, considering my dismal experience with WHITY (especially since I had fully expected it to be the most accessible of the lot!), I don’t know when I’ll muster the courage to get to them now…even if DESPAIR (1978) is a reasonably enticing title, given the participation of Dirk Bogarde and the Vladimir Nabokov source. To be fair, the Western ambiance is delivered in spades throughout. The film was stunningly shot in Widescreen – by Michael Ballhaus (later a valued collaborator of Martin Scorsese) – in Almeria, location site of many a Spaghetti Western. It generally has the right feel for time and place with regards to settings and wardrobe, while the all-important score is highlighted by a decidedly infectious riff. Even so, the repertoire of English-language ballads (the bulk of the film, of course, is in German) allotted to chanteuse/prostitute Hanna Schygulla – not to mention her own affected delivery – is inappropriately modern and comes across as unintentionally laughable! Schygulla was a fixture in Fassbinder’s work; the film also features Ron Randell (best-known, if at all, for playing Christ’s attorney[!] in Nicholas Ray’s KING OF KINGS [1961]) and Ulli Lommel (who later graduated to directing himself, notably TENDERNESS OF THE WOLVES [1973] and THE BOOGEYMAN [1980]). The overriding pretentiousness at work here is palpable above all in the film’s lethargic, indeed deadly, pace (never have I seen a movie in which the characters moved more s-l-o-w-l-y!). Besides, it isn’t helped by unsympathetic (even annoying) characters – mostly members of a dysfunctional family (and particularly the pasty-faced, frizzy-haired sons of landowner Randell) – indulging in all manners of transgressions (from such commonly-depicted capital sins as greed, lust and murder down to nymphomania, masochism, interracial relationships and incest!). In the midst of all this is an unsavory gay subtext which, inevitably, seems to be on the agenda of virtually all directors so inclined in real-life (but becoming obviously more pronounced in the liberalized modern cinema)! The plot, for what it’s worth, is reminiscent of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s THEOREM (1968) – coincidentally another gay parable – as the life of everyone involved is influenced in some way by the household’s black manservant (the character bears the ironic titular nickname but is also curiously underwritten and inexpressive), who’s actually the fruit of Randell’s illicit affair with his frumpy colored maid! The fact that each, in turn, pleads with him to slay the other could have turned this into a pointed black comedy – but the film is simply too labored and deliberately self-conscious for the subtlety intrinsic to such refined treatment... In the end, one should note that 1971 saw a boom of arty Westerns with other such offerings as Alexandro Jodorowsky’s EL TOPO, Peter Fonda’s THE HIRED HAND and Robert Altman’s McCABE AND MRS MILLER. As for WHITY (whose shooting, by the way, inspired Fassbinder’s own BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE [1971]), I had owned the Fantoma DVD – which includes an Audio Commentary from Ballhaus and Lommel – for quite a while before actually sitting down to view it. I’d purchased the disc through the company’s own website during a sale but, as I said, could only manage to find a slot for it in my hectic/eclectic schedule after having enjoyed a couple of equally stylized (but far more satisfying) Spaghetti Westerns – DEATH SENTENCE (1968) and YANKEE (1966) – earlier this week.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder gehört zu den bedeutendsten deutschen Filmschaffenden der Nachkriegszeit. Mit Filmen wie "Welt am Draht", "Angst essen Seele auf" und "Die Ehe der Maria Braun", die ihm auch international Anerkennung und Auszeichnungen wie den Adolf-Grimme-Preis, den Fipresci-Preis der Filmfestspiele von Cannes und den Silbernen Bären der Berlinale verschafften, gehört er zu den wichtigsten Vertretern des so genannten Neuen Deutschen Films der 1970er und 80er Jahre. Noch während der Arbeiten an seinem letzten Projekt "Querelle" starb Fassbinder 1982 mit nur 37 Jahren an einem Herzstillstand, der vermutlich auf Überarbeitung und gleichzeitigen Konsum von Kokain, Schlaftabletten und Alkohol zurückzuführen war. Im Mai 2015 wäre der Regisseur 70 Jahre alt geworden. Die Filmemacherin Annekatrin Hendel widmet sich in ihrer Dokumentation "Die Fassbinder Story" dem Leben und Schaffen des Künstlers.

A German serial killer preys on boys and young men during the so-called years of crisis between the wars. Based on the true story of Fritz Haarmann, aka the Butcher of Hanover and the Vampire of Hanover.

Tensions between members of a film crew build while they wait for the arrival of the director and star to arrive on location.