Early, prolific Fassbinder in Peru

As Jean-Luc Godard once said: “How don’t they want him to die young, if he created alone the essential New German Cinema?” The French master was talking about his colleague Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who not only did 43 films during his short career, but also worked as an actor during the important moment that the German cinema lived between the 60’s and the 80’s.

For this great contribution also for the world cinema, Fassbinder is being remembered in Lima, Peru, for his early movies, in a retrospective called “Der erste Fassbinder” (the first Fassbinder) in the PUCP San Miguel, one of the main universities in the city.

Until the 23rd of July, the program includes the many movies he shot between 1969 and 1970, like “Liebe ist kälter als der Tod” (1969), “Katzelmacher” (1969), “Die Niklashauser Fahrt” (1970) and “Der amerikanische Soldat” (1970).

Entrances are free, but reservations are needed: grupoatoq@gmail.com.

See details about the retrospective here.

Brazil gets a taste of “The Lubitsch Touch”

Comedies, historic dramas and musicals. While everybody else in Germany had something to do with German expressionism during the beginning of the 20th century, Ernst Lubitsch was “only” trying to entertain.

He left to the world a wide and rich filmography: 72 titles, done between 1914 and 1947, from which 15 will be shown in Sao Paulo, Brazil, from tomorrow, 8th of July, until the 19th of this month, in the exhibition called “The Lubitsch Touch – The Cinema of Ernst Lubitsch”, organized by the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil.

The event covers the phase when the director, born in Berlin, lived and produced in Germany and, later, his period in the United States, the country he chose to run from the Nazism.

In the program, four films are in 35 mm, six in 16 mm and five are on DVD format. The highlights are the restored versions (35 and 16 mm) of “Anna Boleyn” (1920, Germany), “Die Bergkatze” (1921, Germany), “Schuhpalast Pinkus” (1916, Germany), “Ninotchka” (1939, USA) and “To Be or Not to Be” (1942, USA), besides a fragment of “Die Flamme” (1922, Germany).

Arndt Röskens, the coordinator of the Panorama section inside the Berlin Film Festival and member of Rio de Janeiro Film Festival program committee, is responsible for the curatorship.

See the complete program here.