(Beware of the Holy Whore)

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
103 minutes
In German with English subtitles
 
This is a journey into total chaos, creativity and despair. It was a major shift in director Fassbinder's cinematic vision, the film that broke the ice and opened up his range. Fassbinder wasn't just a director of films, he was a tour de force, and in this movie he exposes his mad world of filmmaking, where conflict and insanity and even depression are harnessed into a creative vision.
 
This story of this early Fassbinder flick is based on a real life event when Fassbinder's troupe of social misfits were holed up in a seaside hotel in Spain with loads of alcohol and drugs, but no money to shoot the film. Throughout the course of this grotesque black comedy, we witness the slow disintegration of his communal theatre group. Personalities clash, tempers flare, fights break out, and jealousy is always lurking beneath the surface. In a way, this film is Fassbinder's reflection and interrogation of his own crazed filmmaking approach...  it's a culmination of everything he had done up until that point. But if Beware of the Holy Whore is indeed chaotic, it is also stunning and gorgeous.... cinematographer Michael Ballhaus (who later worked with Scorsese) is behind the lens and his dazzling work is always fascinating to behold.

The cast of actors collected together for this wild trip is also pretty amazing. Eddie Constantine (Alphaville), Lou Castel, Margarethe von Trotta, Werner Schroeter, Hanna Schygulla, Ulli Lommel and even Fassbinder himself. The music is as eclectic as hell... ranging from Leonard Cohen to Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Spooky Tooth to a haunting Donizetti aria. One of the least screened movies by Fassbinder, but still packs a keg of dynamite. 

This will be a high-definition screening.