Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a German film director screenwriter and actor He is one of the most important figures in the New German Cinema Fassbinder was prolific in a professional career that lasted less than fifteen years he completed forty feature length films two television film series three short films four video productions twentyfour stage plays and four radio plays He had tortured personal relationships with the actors and technicians around him who formed a surrogate family However his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social outsiders and his hatred of institutionalized violence He ruthlessly attacked both German bourgeois society and the larger limitations of humanity Fassbinder died in June 1982 at the age of 37 from a lethal cocktail of cocaine and barbiturates His death has often been cited as the event that ended the New German Cinema movement