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The entire film industry is soon to descend upon the Côte d’Azur this May as the Cannes Film Festival readies for its 77th edition. From May 14 through May 25, the iconic festival event of the year will host much-awaited new works for auteurs and rising directors alike, across sections like the Competition, Directors’ Fortnight, Un Certain Regard (with jury president Xavier Dolan), and Critics’ Week. Major prizes will come at the end of the festival, and will no doubt set the tone for the movie year ahead.

Such was the case last year when Justine Triet’s eventual Oscar winner “Anatomy of a Fall” took home the top award, the Palme d’Or, the fourth consecutive film distributed by Neon to do so. Jonathan Glazer’s 2023 Grand Prize winner “The Zone of Interest” also won two Academy Awards, while Competition entries “Perfect Days” and “May December” earned Oscar nominations, too.

Above: 1973 New York Film Festival poster designed by Niki de Saint Phalle.The 61st edition of the New York Film Festival, which opens tonight, has 32 films in its Main Slate, fifteen films in its Spotlight section, ten films and seven collections of shorts in the Currents sidebar, and eleven revivals. That's over 60 feature films. Fifty years ago, in 1973, the 11th edition of the festival had just eighteen feature films and nineteen shorts. Just like this year’s opener—Todd Haynes’s May December—1973’s opening night film, François Truffaut’s Day for Night, had premiered four months earlier at the Cannes Film Festival. And as with this year’s festival, the 1973 edition opened, fifty years and one day ago exactly, in the shadow of an artists' strike. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians had been picketing the New York Philharmonic outside Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where the festival was taking place,...

The 61st New York Film Festival kicks off Sept. 29 with Todd Haynes’ drama “May December” starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. Sofia Coppola’s well-received Venice hit “Priscilla” about Priscilla Presley is the fest’s Centerpiece. Michael Mann’s biopic “Ferrari” with Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz the closing night feature while Bradley Cooper’s portrait of composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein “Maestro,” which had a seven-minute standing ovation in Venice, is the festival’s spotlight gala. Other films screening include Yorgos Lanthimos “Poor Things,” which won the Golden Lion and best actress for Emma Stone at Venice, as well as Andrew Haigh’s “All of us Strangers” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”

A director came into his own 50 years ago at the New York Film Festival: Martin Scorsese. He’s of cinema’s greatest directors, who has made such landmark films as ‘Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” Goodfellas,...

Rainer Werner Fassbinder died as he lived: at many frames per second. The cinephile’s errand of trying to watch everything the German filmmaker made in his lifetime, from all 10 hours of “Berlin Alexanderplatz” to more modestly scaled melodramas like “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” often feels like an act of running in place. Reports of his “contradictory” and “complex” nature reveal what we already know: He was a self-medicating, workaholic perfectionist who drove himself into the ground, completing more than 40 films in his short life, and died because of it. He also did not believe in love, or so say his latest collaborators in absentia, director François Ozon and Fassbinder’s longtime muse Hanna Schygulla.

Ozon has made his best film in years with “Peter von Kant,” one that will be seen by few but relished by all who do. The movie is both a response to...

More than 20 years after adapting a Rainer Werner Fassbinder play called “Waters Drops on Burning Rocks” into a movie, François Ozon has made this gender-flipped adaptation of one of Fassbinder’s greatest films, “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” in an attempt to understand Fassbinder’s real-life struggle with the power plays of love.

Fassbinder’s “Petra von Kant” was shot very quickly on a very low budget, and he used a lot of long takes; every camera movement in Fassbinder’s version of this material feels so ultra-controlled that watching it is like getting tied up in an S & M dungeon or getting slowly strangled by a python. Ozon shoots his own “Peter von Kant” with a casualness that can feel frivolous, and he uses very conventional short takes for shot/reverse shot conversations.

Fassbinder’s “Petra von Kant” revolves around a lesbian love triangle that consists of...

Save Your Tears for Another Day: Ozon Revels in the Camp Mystique of R.W. Fassbinder

It’s clear François Ozon has long been obsessed with the cinema of New German Wave provocateur Rainer Werner Fassbinder, seeing as one of his first successes was 2000’s Water Drops on Burning Rocks, adapted from an unproduced screenplay of his idol’s. Over two decades later, and working at a similar breakneck pace, Ozon attempts something nearing sacrilege in Peter von Kant, a liberal reimagining of Fassbinder’s most hysterically excessive camp masterpiece, 1972’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (read review). Whereas the original was a femme-centric snake pit featuring three of Fassbinder’s usual muses, Ozon switches the queered perspective to male and transposes bits and pieces of Fassbinder’s own life into the von Kant prism about a monstrous artist who devours all those around him in the quest to quell his desires.

Making movies at such a clip that it can be hard to keep track of which ones actually get a U.S. release, French filmmaker François Ozon is back this year with a reimagining of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Peter Von Kant, of course inspired by the 1972 classic The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, follows a successful, famous director, who lives with his assistant Karl, whom he likes to mistreat and humiliate. Through the great actress Sidonie, he meets and falls in love with Amir, a handsome young man of modest means. He offers to share his apartment and help Amir break into the world of cinema. Ahead of a September 2 release from Strand Releasing, a new trailer has now arrived.

David Katz said in his review, “From the sure evidence of his filmography—and, yes, his legendarily turbulent private life—Rainer Werner Fassbinder should be quite tickled by the thought of another,...

Following its world premiere as the Berlin Film Festival opener, Francois Ozon’s “Peter von Kant” has been acquired by Strand Releasing for U.S. distribution.

Represented in international markets by Playtime, the critically acclaimed movie is inspired by Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cult film “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” with Denis Menochet playing the tormented filmmaker, opposite Isabelle Adjani, who stars as his muse.

Ozon previously told Variety that the movie was a “universal tale of passion, timely as ever” and “explores the relationships of domination, control and submission in the creative world.”

“Peter von Kant” marks Ozon’s sixth movie that played in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. He won the Silver Bear for his 2018 film, “By the Grace of God,” and “8 Women” 20 years ago. He also debuted “Water Drops on Burning Rocks,” another adaptation of a Fassbinder work, at the festival in 2000.

Playtime...

The Berlin Film Festival has staged its first in-person edition since 2020, soldiering on amid a wave of the Covid omicron variant in Germany and a last-minute virtual pivot for the European Film Market. Here are our main takeaways below:

Film Industry Pining For In-Person Meetings

Despite the EFM being online, a clutch of buyers and sellers made the trek to Berlin where they held a mix of online and physical meetings in the Marriott and a very bare Gropius Bau. Though the fest nixed parties due to omicron concerns, film delegations held dinners for select outsiders that felt like clandestine wartime get-togethers. “Enough with the Zooms! We need the human contact to make deals,” said Vision Distribution’s Catia Rossi, a veteran Italian sales agent, during the dinner for Panorama title “Swing Ride.” “I never thought I’d say this, but give me back the AFM!”

Technical difficulties

The opening...

From the sure evidence of his filmography—and, yes, his legendarily turbulent private life—Rainer Werner Fassbinder should be quite tickled by the thought of another, younger filmmaker deifying him in their own work. Fassbinder’s is the cinema of the submissive power dynamic, and François Ozon, no slouch either, has come to play servant to the master. What’s more elusive in Peter von Kant, his slavish reimagining of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, is what’s gained from this entangling designed to be mutually fulfilling for both parties.

Ozon has always been a fleet, engaging storyteller, but he is overly fond of pastiche, though it’s unlikely his career would’ve been so prolific without letting outside material lead his creative impulses. Still Peter von Kant is a mismatch for his sensibilities, a piece of upmarket heritage cinema with none of the subversion, danger, or nervy politics of the forebear.

François Ozon gives Fassbinder’s all-female 1972 drama The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant a makeover, making it lighter and more camp

François Ozon made a breakthrough in his film-making career in 2000 with an adaptation of an unproduced stage play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Water Drops on Burning Rocks. Now, to open this year’s Berlin film festival, he has returned to the dark master of New German Cinema with a gender-switched version of Fassbinder’s 1972 movie The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, that strange, angular, claustrophobic drama in which only women appear on screen.

Fassbinder’s film is set entirely in the apartment of a fashion designer who has an emotionally abusive relationship with her live-in assistant, and then conceives a mad and despairing love for a beautiful young woman who openly cheats on her. Ozon makes some of these characters men, but only some of them. We...

Exclusive: Organizers of the Berlin Film Festival have told us that the world premiere screening of opening film Peter Von Kant was disrupted last night due to “a server problem.”

A festival spokesperson told us: “We very much regret that a server problem at the Berlinale Palast led to an interruption of the screening of Peter Von Kant. After 7 minutes of interruption the screening could be continued.”

The screen blacked out twice in quick succession during last night’s world premiere leading to audible frustration among guests. Reports are that the delay was closer to 10-15 minutes. Following the interruption, the movie played through to its end.

After the premiere, one of the hosts for the night took to the stage to apologize to guests. The film’s star Denis Menochet also thanked cinema-goers for their patience.

It has been a bumpy start for the festival. Covid protocols outside the...

The 72nd Berlin Film Festival got off to a promising if somewhat subdued start Feb. 10 amid strict restrictions due to the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, which put a major damper on this year’s festivities and kept crowds to a minimum.

While only some 800 guests attended the opening night ceremony at the Berlinale Palast — less than half of the normal capacity of the festival’s grand main venue — the event was nevertheless a hopeful sign for the local film industry and for cinema in general.

The festival was uncompromising in its mask policy for the red carpet, rendering most high-profile guests unrecognizable — although many whipped them off for the phalanx of photographers. But the Berlinale Palast’s famous disco ball spun nonetheless and aside from the Covid of it all, the scene felt very much like old times, both on the red carpet and inside, where a number of local guests...

The breath of life and beating heart at the center of countless, Russian nesting doll layers of artifice and art-house reference, actor Denis Menochet doesn’t just anchor “Peter von Kant,” he makes the Francois Ozon project a film. Because without its venerable lead, this twenty-first feature from France’s most prolific modern director might be something of a lark — and wrangles it into a deep-in-the-weeds pseudo-biopic of the German filmmaker himself.

In some ways a sort of spiritual — if admittedly much less audacious — cousin to Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There,” “Peter von Kant” looks to explore an artist through the prism of his own creations, pulling up the script to Fassbinder’s 1972 film (itself adapted from an earlier play) and Ctrl+H-ing each character with analogues for the director and those in his orbit. And so, in this telling, Peter von Kant is a hard-partying, West German director at...

How do you make something real out of something that was artificial to begin with? Should you even try? François Ozon has, with “Peter von Kant”: a deconstructed, gender-swapped and then fastidiously reconstructed overhaul of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.” 50 years on, Fassbinder’s film remains as close to un-remake-able as any ever made, mainly because it remakes itself every second as it goes along. If this makes Ozon’s version, which opens this year’s Berlin Film Festival, an oddly self-invalidating proposition from the get-go, that impression only deepens as the minutes tick amusingly but inconsequentially by.

For the uninitiated (who are very obviously not the audience for this inside-baseball bauble), Fassbinder’s film is the story of a sadomasochistic lesbian love triangle between a successful fashion designer, her model protégée and her mute assistant. (It features perhaps cinema’s most famous...

It’s a neat conceit, making the directing colossus of 1970s German cinema into the star of his own show. Peter Von Kant, the opening film of the Berlin Film Festival, is “freely adapted” by French director François Ozon from The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s highly stylized 1972 story of three women locked in a toxic triangle of love, jealousy, domination and submission. The storyline and much of the dialogue, is the same; where Ozon shakes it up is by making the trio all men.

Ozon has tangled with Fassbinder before. His 2000 film, Water Drops On Burning Rocks, which also dealt with power struggles within sexual relationships, was adapted from a Fassbinder play. Taking on The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, a recognized landmark of European cinema, is a bolder move, made at a different moment in Ozon’s career. This is maestro on...

Exclusive: French actress Isabelle Adjani, co-star of the Berlin Film Festival’s opening film Peter Von Kant, has not traveled for the world premiere tonight due to being a close contact of someone with Covid, we understand from multiple sources.

The film is being represented in Berlin by director Francois Ozon and stars Denis Menochet, Khalil Garbia and Stéfan Crépon, among others.

Veteran German actress Hanna Schygulla, who has a supporting role in the film, is also not in attendance tonight, for reasons that remain unclear. The iconic German New Wave star is well known for her collaborations with legendary local filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, including in The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant (1972), which is the inspiration for Ozon’s Peter Von Kant.

Berlin Film Festival Gets Underway With Messages Of Determination As Event Presses On Amid Question Marks

Fassbinder’s original follows a successful fashion designer who abandons...

François Ozon, the prolific and provocative French director who won the Berlinale’s 2018 Golden Bear Award with “By the Grace of God,” is returning to the festival with “Peter von Kant” which will world premiere on opening night. A twist on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cult film “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” Ozon’s movie has Denis Menochet playing the tormented filmmaker, opposite Isabelle Adjani, who stars as his muse. Like the original film, “Peter von Kant” is about a film about love, jealousy and domination. It’s Ozon’s sixth movie in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. Ozon’s Berlin films include 2000’s “Water Drops on Burning Rocks,” another adaptation of a Fassbinder work, and “8 Women,” which won the Silver Bear 20 years ago. The director discussed his artistic ambition for the “Peter von Kant” with Variety.

This is your second Fassbinder-based project. Why is Fassbinder...

Peter Von Kant

Having recently crossed off the name of Sophie Marceau on his working with great French actresses bingo card with his last film (Tout s’est bien passé), his latest project, which began filming earlier last year, features the iconic Isabelle Adjani and the participation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder protégé Hanna Schygulla. Selected as the opening film for the next edition of the Berlin Intl. Film Festival, François Ozon makes a rare entry into biopic and film about a film genre and reteams with his By the Grace of God cinematographer Manuel Dacosse.

Gist: An adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, the character of Petra von Kant is instead a male character (played by Denis Menochet).…...

The 72nd edition of the Berlin International Film Festival will open with François Ozon drama Peter Von Kant, starring Denis Menochet, Isabelle Adjani and Hanna Schygulla.

The French-language film will play as part of the international Competition and get its world premiere on February 10, 2022, at the Berlinale Palast.

The feature is an adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s heralded film Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, 1972). The French filmmaker turns the character of Petra von Kant into a man and a filmmaker in a nod to Fassbinder.

Berlin organizers this morning announced protocols and restrictions for the in-person event, which will be shortened by three days and run with 50% capacity in cinemas.

The event remains one of the few festivals still on course to go ahead in-person at the start of 2022 after Sundance and Palm Springs were forced to cancel their physical...

The Berlin Film Festival has its opening film in François Ozon’s “Peter von Kant.”

The film, which stars Denis Menochet, Isabelle Adjani and Hanna Schygulla, is part of the fest’s International Competition and will have its world premiere on Feb. 10 at the Berlinale Palast. Variety revealed on Tuesday that the festival is planning to go ahead as an in-person event, and organizers provided further details of the plan on Wednesday.

“We are beyond thrilled to welcome back François Ozon to the festival and are happy to launch our next edition with his new film,” said Berlin artistic director Carlo Chatrian. “For this year’s opening, we were looking for a film that could bring lightness and verve into our somber daily lives. ‘Peter von Kant’ is a theatrical tour de force around the concept of lockdown. In the hands of Ozon, the kammerspiel becomes the perfect container for love and jealousy,...

Having highlighted 30 films we guarantee are worth seeing this year and films we hope get U.S. distribution, we now venture into the unknown. One expects more pandemic-related delays, but there’s still plenty of currently under-the-radar movies that will hopefully make a mark in 2022.

Though the majority lack a set release—let alone confirmed festival premiere—most have wrapped production and will likely debut at some point in 2022. Be sure to check back for updates over the next twelve months (and beyond).

100. Babylon (Damien Chazelle; Dec. 25)

Damien Chazelle’s obsession with the magic of cinema seems to be reaching its natural apex: a detailed recreation of the era where silent film transitioned to sound. For collaborating with the biggest cast of his career, including Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie, this should mark a big leap for the Oscar-winning filmmaker. Chazelle’s greatest strength is his ability to capture the...

One France’s most prolific contemporary filmmakers, Francois Ozon reliably turns out a film per year, with each outing a zig to the previous year’s zag.

At his last Cannes premiere in 2017, Ozon scandalized the festival audience with his delightful, defiantly trashy thriller “Double Lover,” a film that opened with a kind of mission statement match-cut — cutting from a gynecologists’ view of a vagina to an ophthalmologists’ view of an eye — and only went bolder from there.

After making two more films since then, he returned to the Cannes Film Festival in the Main Competition section this year with “Everything Went Fine,” a subdued and deliberately unflashy euthanasia tale that Cannes audiences greeted with polite applause before shuffling out of the screening unlikely to speak of it with any real passion — and that might be partly by design.

Adapting author Emmanuèle Bernheim’s memoir of the same name, Ozon...

Writer, director and actress Rebecca Miller discusses a few of her favorite films with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Personal Velocity: Three Portraits (2002)

The Ballad Of Jack And Rose (2005)

The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee (2009)

Maggie’s Plan (2015)

Explorers (1985)

The Way We Were (1973)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (1953)

Annie Hall (1977)

Repulsion (1965)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Knife In The Water (1962)

The Tenant (1976)

Cries and Whispers (1972)

Persona (1966)

The Magician (1958)

Hour Of The Wolf (1968)

The Virgin Spring (1960)

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

The Exorcist (1973)

The Shining (1980)

La Dolce Vita (1960)

Regarding Henry (1991)

Angela (1995)

Badlands (1973)

Casino (1995)

On The Waterfront (1954)

My Dinner with Andre (1981)

Jules and Jim (1962)

The Bitter Tears Of Petra von Kant (1972)

Wings Of Desire (1987)

The Killer Inside Me (1976)

The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Married To The Mob (1988)

Blue Velvet (1986)

Dune (1984)

Imitation Of Life (1934)

Imitation Of Life (1959)

Written On The Wind (1956)

Magnificent Obsession (1954)

All That Heaven Allows...

Francois Ozon, one of France’s most prestigious and prolific filmmakers, will next direct Isabelle Adjani and Denis Menochet (“Custody”) in “Petra Von Kant,” a film adaptation of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s cult play “The Bitter Tears.”

“Petra Von Kant” will star Menochet as Fassbinder, while Adjani will play the German director’s muse, according to Satellifax, which was first to report the news.

“The Bitter Tears” was previously adapted into a film by Fassbinder himself in 1972. Titled “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” the film boasted an all-female cast with Margit Carstensen playing Petra von Kant, a prominent fashion designer with narcissistic tendencies.

Ozon previously adapted Fassbinder’s play “Water Drops on Burning Rocks” into a 2000 film with Ludivine Sagnier, which competed at the Berlinale.

“Petra Von Kant” will be produced by Ozon’s own production company, Foz Productions. The shoot is expected to kick off this week.

Coming off his Normandy-set gay drama Summer of 85, which will get a. U.S. release later this year, François Ozon already shot another new film titled Everything Went Fine that is awaiting a premiere. Now, he’s looking to a long-time influence for his next project. The French filmmaker will be loosely reworking the Rainer Werner Fassbinder masterpiece The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant for a new project titled Peter von Kant.

Cineuropa reports that the Cnc is helping to fund the film, though details are sparse on Ozon’s new approach, aside from having a male lead as the title indicates––quite different than the all-female cast of the 1972 original, based on Fassbinder’s own play. Set almost entirely inside an apartment, the film follows the evolving relationships between a fashion designer, stylist, and a newcomer to the world of modeling.

The film won’t mark the...

The French film centre will also lend its support to films by Rebecca Zlotowski, Gaspar Noé and Hugo P Thomas, as well as animated films by Michel Hazanavicus and Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal. Eight projects were singled out during the first 2021 session of the Cnc’s second advance on receipts committee. Standing tall among these works is Peter von Kant, the 21st feature film by prolific director François Ozon. For the second time, after Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (in competition in Berlin in 2000), the filmmaker has adapted the play The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant by Germany’s Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who brought the production to the big screen himself in 1972). For the record, the original version of the work revolves around a famous fashion designer, widowed by her first husband, divorced from the second...

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...

The German festival opens tonight with the premiere of Oskar Roehler’s Enfant Terrible.

The international premiere of Enfant Terrible, Oskar Roehler’s tribute to the legendary New German Cinema director Rainer Werner Fassbinder kicks off the mostly physical edition of the Filmfest Hamburg in Germany today, September 24.

Enfant Terrible was the only German film to be selected for this year’s Cannes 2020 label and Hamburg is the first time the film will screen in front of a live audience. Weltkino is releasing in German cinemas from October 1.

Roehler will be in town for the opening night of the mostly physical festival.

The German festival opens tonight with the premiere of Oskar Roehler’s Enfant Terrible.

The international premiere of Enfant Terrible, Oskar Roehler’s tribute to the legendary New German Cinema director Rainer Werner Fassbinder kicks off the mostly physical edition of the Hamburg Filmfest in Germany today, September 24.

Enfant Terrible was the only German film to be selected for this year’s Cannes 2020 label and Hamburg is the first time the film will screen in front of a live audience. Weltkino is releasing in German cinemas from October 1.

Roehler will be in town for the opening night of the mostly physical festival.

A director fends off meddling execs and egotistical actors while remaking a German classic in this ensemble satire

In a German film studio amid a half-built set, documentarian-turned-feature director Vera (Judith Engel) is trying to pull together a remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. This adaptation of Fassbinder’s own play, now considered a queer classic, featured an all-female cast orbiting around the manipulative titular protagonist. However, Vera wants to recast the crucial role of Karin with a male star, which would entirely change the sexual dynamics of the story. Whether she’ll manage to pull it off looks increasingly doubtful as agencies, TV commissioners and producers jostle over the final casting decisions, and a series of moderately known (in Germany) female actors come in to screen test for the role of Petra, each one mildly put out that they’re being...

The actor, who collaborated with the director on films including Fear Eats the Soul and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, also featured in Herzog’s Woyzeck

Irm Hermann, one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s closest collaborators, has died in Berlin aged 77 following what her agent called a “short, serious illness”.

The actor, who was a staple of German theatre, TV and radio, made her name for her work with the uncompromising and virtuosic director, who she first encountered while working at the German automobile association.

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Anthology Film Archives

Presented by Screen Slate, “1995: The Year the Internet Broke” includes Ghost in the Shell, Hackers, Johnny Mnemonic, and more.

It’s the final weekend of a Dušan Makavejev retrospective.

Film Forum

“The Women Behind Hitchcock” features Rebecca, The Lady Vanishes, Shadow of a Doubt, and more.

French Institute Alliance Française

The...

Set to hit theaters in Los Angeles and New York tomorrow is Orson Oblowitz’s home invasion thriller Trespassers, which stars Angela Trimbur and Fairuza Balk (two of this writer’s favorite actresses), as well as Zach Avery, Janel Parrish,g and Jonathan Howard. The story follows two couples who Airbnb a house in the middle of the desert for a weekend to try to work out their respective issues, but things go horribly awry once they find themselves in a fight for their lives.

Daily Dead recently chatted with Trespassers director Orson Oblowitz about his initial interest in taking on the project, as well as the casting process, the challenges of creating the film’s visual style, how working on the project transformed him as an artist, and more.

Look for Trespassers in both La and NYC this weekend, and for those of you in other cities around the country,...

by Chris Feil

“They asked me how I knew...”

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” by The Platters is a cinematic staple, constantly showing up in films and yet hasn’t become a cliche. The song has been used for umpteen other tragic romances in film like Blue Valentine and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, not to mention countless less narratively significant needle drops on screen. But Andrew Haigh's 45 Years is the one that wrings it for every last drop of its sweeping grandeur and matches the scale of its emotion...

Jason from Mnpp here with another edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- the year 1972 is the "Year of the Month" at Tfe for August and coincidentally I'd just listed my favorite films of 1972 over on my own site recently. There I chose five fave films but it's not hard for me to narrow it down further and choose my absolute favorite from that bunch - Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is my favorite Fassbinder (which is saying quite a bit given my love for Fassbinder) and it stars my favorite Fassbinder actress (I'm Team Margit from way back) in a lesbian bed death match with Everybody Else's Favorite Fassbinder Actress (Hanna Schygulla as the beautiful user Karin)... which makes it perfect for one of these polls!

bike trails

Previously We wish The Fugitive a happy 25 last week and y'all tossed your lot in with the man accused,...

by Murtada Elfadl

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

A film I desperately wanted to see that had eluded me for a long time was Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972). I promised myself that I wouldn’t succumb to watching it at home; I’d wait and hope that it would eventually appear soon in a repertory theater. And sure enough it did, three months later. I got the full theatrical experience of the classic film, screened in celluloid glory. I’m glad I waited. My first screening of A Place in the Sun (1951) happened only last year, and was so exhilarating it was my favorite film I’ve seen in a cinema in 2017. Ditto Claire Denis’ Beau Travail (1999). I enjoyed all these films and more without distraction, in the dark, projected big and among fellow cinephiles...

Editor’s Note: This article is presented in partnership with FilmStruck. The exclusive streaming home for The Criterion Collection, FilmStruck features the largest streaming library of contemporary and classic arthouse, indie, foreign and cult films as well as extensive bonus content, filmmaker interviews and rare footage. Learn more here.

Todd Haynes is one of the most distinct voices working in film today. He’s also a cinematic chameleon. For every period film Haynes makes, he and his team of craftsman adapt not only the look of the movies or photography of that era, but the visual language as well.

For example, both “Carol” and “Far from Heaven” are Haynes films set in ’50s-era America, but they are worlds apart. While “Carol” got its color palette and sense of composition from the photographers like Saul Leiter who documented the period, “Far From Heaven” recreated the manufactured studio look of Douglas Sirk’s melodramas of that era.

The late cinematographer Michael Ballhaus didn’t grow up watching movies. His parents were stage actors, and he first fell in love with the art of performance. And as a cinematographer, one of his many gifts was the way he captures actors’ faces and how his camera found its rhythm with their movements and emotions.

Read More: Martin Scorsese Remembers His Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus: ‘He Changed My Way Of Thinking’

He fell in love with movies at age 20 when he visited the set of Max Ophuls’ “Lola Montes.” Ballhaus spent 10 days on the circus set and became entranced by the period style and the master director’s virtuoso swirling camera movement. Not until Ballhaus’ later Hollywood work, on films like “The Age of Innocence” or “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” did he get the chance to work on lavish sets and play with all the toys of prestige filmmaking. Yet...

Michael Ballhaus, the acclaimed, three-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer who worked on Gangs of New York and Goodfellas, died Tuesday evening in Berlin after a short illness. He was 81. Born August 5, 1935 in Germany, Ballhaus was an accomplished cinematographer, working closely with Rainer Werner Fassbinder on 16 films, beginning with 1970's Whity and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Satan’s Brew and Chinese Roulette, among others. Ballhaus also worked with Martin…...

Rainer Werner Fassbinder made more than 40 features in his 37 years on this planet, 23 of which starred Hanna Schygulla. The two first met in their early 20s when they were attending acting school in Munich, hitting it off instantly: “It suddenly became crystal clear to me that Hanna Schygulla would one day be the star of my films,” the New German Cinema stalwart wrote. “Maybe even something like their driving force.”

Schygulla was recently interviewed by the Guardian on the eve of an extensive BFI retrospective dedicated to Fassbinder, referring to herself as “one of the survivors” of the “Ali: Fear Eats the Soul” and “The Marriage of Maria Braun” director.

Read More: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Top 10 Favorite Films

“He had a strong smell about him,” she recalls. “He smelled how he looked. Like a spotty rebel filled with angst.” Fassbinder, who died of an overdose in 1982, cast the actress in his debut film.

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) is showing March 28 - April 27, 2017 in the United Kingdom in the series Fassbinder: The Exploitability of Feelings.By now many will have encountered Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (German: Angst essen Seele auf, 1974) even if they are not hardcore devotees of the director’s oeuvre. Along with his Brd trilogy, Ali stands as one of Fassbinder’s most acclaimed and viewed works. The film follows 60-year-old cleaning woman Emmi (Brigitte Mira) who becomes involved with much younger Moroccan mechanic Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) after one of his friends dares him to dance with her when she walks alone into the bar one rainy evening. Ali has been frequently praised for the moving performances of its leads and for how it so effectively portrays...

Stephen K. Bannon’s ascension from Breitbart News executive to President-elect Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist and senior counselor shocked the world, in no small part because the alt-right figure has no background in government management. However, it’s not the first time Bannon has attempted to lead an industry outside of his professional experience. Bannon’s new role may be an ideal platform for propagandistic ambitions, but his career in independent film — first in distribution, then production — casts doubt on how much he believes in any of it.

Ten years ago, Bannon oversaw the distribution of independent films released by Wellspring Media, a company that supported a wide range of international cinema as well as gay-themed and other “transgressive” titles. Movies acquired and released under his tenure include the experimental Lgbt documentary “Tarnation” and “Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry,” a pro-Kerry documentary that opened during the 2004 election.

Three of our current June mini-series are not quite over and spilling into July a teensy bit (Olivia de Havilland & Screen Tarzans & Halfway Mark) but it's that time again to look back on the month that was since the calendar stops for no one! One series that is over is our Fyc's for Emmy hopefuls including full tough to narrow down ballots for drama and comedy prizes. But all this off-current cinema distraction was fine because this summer movie season hasn't exactly been fire, if you know what I mean. 

5 Personal Favs

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - four-part tag team celebration

"This kind of stuff" - a key scene in Weekend (2011)

The Furniture: Hail Caesar! - Hobie Doyle keeps it simple in "Merrily We Dance"

Tarzan gets his James Bond on -...The Valley of Gold

Jessica Lange's Long Journey - Our new Triple Crowner 

7 That Sparked Most...

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Season 7 Episode 16

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

Written and Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus 

When you watch a lot of movies you inadvertently end up drawing comparisons between films that you wouldn't have thought to put in conversation previously. It's as if you've accidentally become a guest programmer of a repertory theater or a local festival. Such was the case this week when I (not intentionally) watched Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972) nearly back to back and shook my fists to the heavens and cursed the name of anyone who ever regurgitated the lie that you have to "open up" stage plays to make them work on screen. 

Tears. not totally bitter yet but she's getting there.

Sometimes half the power of a text is in its site-specific constriction. So...

This week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot was derailed by a very tough communal week and also a busy one for entirely different reasons for yours truly. But a few of our regular participants soldiered on. Please read their lovely pieces on this underappreciated Francis Ford Copoola curiousity from the early 80s. I think you can see a bit of it in the DNA of Moulin Rouge! if you need extra incentive to watch it on Amazon Prime.

Antagony & Ecstasy chose...

The film that was meant to be a quick cheapie designed to provide a financial shot in the arm to the fledgling American Zoetrope, but instead almost destroyed the company that Coppola had dreamed up as a sort of director-driven filmmaker's commune. It's one of the most idiosyncratic films of its era, overwhelmingly pleasurable despite being entirely unlikable and toxic in every possible way. I have no idea...

Update: Due to terrible events of week, and taking a mental health day, One From The Heart will be pushed back two days. Apologies for the inconvenience but that gives you two more days to watch it on Netflix and join us.

Wanna join us? It's easy to play. Just...

1. watch the movie

2. pick your favorite shot

3. post that shot to your blog, twitter, instagram, tumblr or wherever and say why you chose it. Hashtag it #Hmwybs so we see it

4. we link up on the night of the event when we post the roundup

Thursday June 16th 

One From the Heart (1982, Francis Ford Coppola. Us. 107 minutes)

This Las Vegas set musical was a financial disaster for Coppola's Zoetrope Studios but it's a fascinating visually rich curio. The film features an Oscar nominated song score by Tom Waits and cinematography by Ronald Victor García and Vittorio Storaro. [Amazon Prime | iTunes]

Tues. June 21st

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Germany. 124 minutes)

Many films by this prolific German auteur are frustratingly hard to access but this classic, featuring an all female cast and centering around a fashion designer is relatively easy to get so let's do it! Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus, who really needs to be given an Honorary Oscar immediately. He's 80 years old, still with us, and shot so many great American and German classics.  [Hulu | Amazon | Netflix | iTunes]

Tues June 28th

To Catch a Thief (1955, Alfred Hitchcock. Us. 106 minutes)

Something light & summery as the weather keeps on heating up. Join Cary Grant and Grace Kelly on the French Riviera. Winner of Best Cinematography at the Oscars. [Netflix Instant Watch  | Amazon | iTunes]...

If the age old cliche is true, then true genius will not earn the proper respect and admiration until years after they have passed. Need an example? Subject number one: Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

While he’s garnered high praise before and after his deeply sad passing at the age of 37, the last few years, marked by numerous box sets of his work and various Blu-ray releases of his Grade-a masterpieces, have seen Fassbinder become a relative household name in arthouse and world cinema circles. And now he’s the subject of not one, but two documentaries, one of which debuts this weekend in New York for an exclusive one week engagement at The Metrograph.

With The Fassbinder Story waiting in the wings (it just played this year’s Kino! Festival in NY), director Christian Braad Thomsen attempts to discuss Fassbinder’s life in his own way with the superlative biographical...

It’s no real secret that we’re reaching a tipping point with home video. Streaming is proving a better and better option for the casual consumer every day, and even the cinephile dollar, which has rather successfully driven home video decisions for the past couple of years, has such services as Hulu, Fandor, Mubi, and – soon – FilmStruck vying for their attention. Physical distributors have subsequently doubled down on their most successful and acclaimed models. Criterion is going big on new-to-disc, big international titles with new restorations (Brighter Summer Day, Paris Belongs to Us, A Touch of Zen) and lavish new editions of American classics (The New World, Dr. Strangelove). Kino is investing in silent classics (Fantomas, The Phantom of the Opera, Diary of a Lost Girl) while diversifying to include more American studio titles. Masters of Cinema is going into deep specialty stuff with an Early Murnau box and Edvard Munch.

“Todd Haynes‘ filmography is often overwhelming in its intellectual acumen and emotional devastation,” we noted upon the release of his latest film this past fall. “This is true of Carol, which is at once a return to the deconstruction of femininity, social mores, and mild anarchy of privilege, as well as an honest and heartbreaking story about falling in love and the trepidation therein.” Over 100 film experts, ranging from critics to writers to programmers, agree on the emotional power of the drama, as they’ve voted it the best Lgbt film of all-time.

Conducted by BFI ahead of the 30th BFI Flare: London Lgbt Film Festival, they note this is the “first major critical survey of Lgbt films.” Speaking about leading the poll, Haynes said, “I’m so proud to have Carol voted as the top Lgbt film of all time in this poll launched for the Fest’s 30th edition.