Beware of a Holy Whore

In this sui generis take on the “film about filmmaking,” a brutal self-critique inspired by the production of Whity, Fassbinder puts the blame for that shoot’s sturm und drang squarely upon himself. A cast, crew, and various hangers-on (including New German Cinema fellow travelers Werner Schroeter, Magdalena Montezuma, and Margarethe von Trotta; Eddie Constantine, as the film’s male lead; Fassbinder axioms like Hanna Schygulla, Ulli Lommel, and Kurt Raab; and Fassbinder himself as the film-within-the-film’s producer) congregate in a Spanish hotel bar and wait interminably for the arrival of their leather-jacketed man-child director (Lou Castel). The group then undergoes a series of skirmishes, psychosexual charades, and nonplussed power trips—in what may or may not be an accurate representation of Fassbinder’s behind-the-scenes methods.

Screening with:

Cuba Libre
Albert Serra | Spain | 2013 | DCP | 18m
In this short named for the cocktail ordered at the hotel bar in Beware of a Holy Whore, a singer serenades a small crowd in a moody nightclub who all look the part of Fassbinder characters—if not of Fassbinder himself. Serra pays homage not by mimicking Fassbinder’s style but rather by alchemically conjuring the people, places, and modes of performance most identified with him.