Occasion for celebration is already in the offing as we return from our summer break. On 22 September, Roger Fritz turns 80. It would be quicker to say what Fritz has not done during his life as an artist than to recount everything he has done. He was an assistant to Herbert List and later (…)

Kurt Raab would have turned 75 on 20 July this year. Anyone who saw this actor on screen did not quickly forget him. He seemed to have come from another time. His strongly rolled R recalled a bygone era of acting and rather than simply speaking he declaimed. His fevered, exaggerated performances were a rarity (…)

This year, 10 June marked the thirty-fourth anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s death, and the film critic John Patterson used this occasion to write an appreciation of the director, which was printed in the Guardian. In his article, Patterson speaks of how shaken he was as a young movie buff by the news of the (…)

This month we must once again say farewell to friends. One of them is the photographer Erika Rabau, who died on 10 April. Rabau was born into a middle-class family in Gdansk. She originally wanted to be an actress but decided first to see the world. Her travels took her to South America, where she (…)

This past March was sadly overshadowed by the death of Rudolf Waldemar Brem – an actor and a member of Fassbinder’s circle during the early phase of the director’s career – who died March 17 at the age of 67. Brem was only 19 when he met Fassbinder. The powerfully built young man with blonde (…)