Fassbinder dies

By FocusFeatures.com  | June 09, 2009 @ 03:09 pm

Rainer Werner Fassbinder had just finished production on Querelle, and was finishing a new script on Rosa Luxemburg, when he was found dead from an overdose of alcohol and cocaine. Originally suspected to be a suicide, it was quickly deduced that his death was really only a delayed reaction to his lifestyle of too little sleep, too much work and even more drugs. Within his short 36 years, Fassbinder had written and directed over 30 feature films (many of which he also acted in, edited and/or production designed) along with another 20 or so television and theater works. Now considered perhaps the most important figure of the German New Wave, Fassbinder took his influences from everywhere, including most importantly Hollywood’s Douglas Sirk and France’s Jean-Pierre Melville. In recent years, Fassbinder’s life and legacy has become a battlefield, with the people who knew and worked with him fighting it out for their version of the truth. But his work remains solidly his own. He once said, “I hope to build a house with my films. Some of them are the cellar, some are the walls, and some are the windows. But I hope in time there will be a house.”