Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Klaus Biesenbach

Alfred Döblin's novel Berlin Alexanderplatz, published in 1929, takes place in a world of pimps and small-time criminals in the pre-War years. It was the key literary experience for Fassbinder when he read it at the tender age of 14. When, 20 years later, a major German TV station commissioned him to film this Expressionist classic, what he produced was less a filming of a book in the usual sense (which was also hardly to be expected of the enfant terrible of New German Film), but instead a kind of vivisection of two histories, his own and that of Germany, both at times of identity crises. The artistic qualities of the series by no means received the appreciation they should have. The film was simply too dark for the usual TV sets back then, and the few copies available on tape soon faded. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the death of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982), the Foundation named after him is now presenting a new version of his Berliner Alexanderplatz, restored with great technical effort. Its premiere at the 2007 Berlin Film Festival caused a great stir - and was the definitive proof of Fassbinder's genius and visual impact. The book accompanying the restored film version documents all the details of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz with 560 pages of color film stills, the complete script, Fassbinder's own thoughts on Döblin's novel and analytical essays by Susan Sontag and editor Klaus Biesenbaeh.

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