Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder 31 May 1945 10 June 1982 was a German film director screenwriter and actor Considered one of the most important figures in the New German Cinema Fassbinder was prolific in a professional career less than fifteen years he completed forty featurelength 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