Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 267: Mon Sep 25

The Third Generation (Fassbinder, 1979): Barbican Cinema, 7pm


This promises to be a fascinating evening as Barbican Cinema, in partnership with Fitzcarraldo Editions, to coincide with the release of Ian Penman's latest book Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors, are screening Rainer Werner Fassbinder's chaotic interrogation of terrorism, capitalist greed, and human desires in post-war Germany. Penman, writer and music journalist (The Guardian, Sight & Sound) will join Gareth Evans, writer, producer and curator, for a Q&A after the film.

Time Out review:
Just what we always wanted: the every-day angsts of a terrorist cell as Life with the Lyons. Fassbinder's basic proposition is simple: the West German state is already so repressive that it might well have invented its terrorists as scapegoats for its own growing totalitarianism. Hence this 'comedy in six acts, just like the fairy stories we tell our children, to make their short lives more bearable'. It's a return to the grotesquely overplayed melodrama of Satan's Brew, acted by the entire RWF stock company, plus Bulle Ogier and Eddie Constantine, with a gaggle of haute couture 'subversives' going through the film noir motions of paranoia and anti-capitalist rhetoric. And it's formulated as an affront to all conceivable audiences: if the concept doesn't make you ill, then the interpolations of lavatory graffiti and the constant barrage of background noise from TV and radio will certainly give you headaches. Essential viewing.
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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