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Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s whirlwind career of 40-plus movies made within just over a dozen years kicked off with Love Is Colder Than Death. It ended, all too soon, with a sendoff that may as well have been called Death Is Hotter Than Love. Even if it hadn’t wound up being Fassbinder’s final cinematic will and testament, Querelle, an uber-horny but otherwise unorthodox adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 novel Querelle of Brest, would still feel like a film precariously perched between rowdy, profane life and that liminal, insatiable zone that always follows la petite mort.

But because the timeline spanning the film’s completion to its release was bisected by Fassbinder’s death from a drug overdose, it’s nearly impossible to avoid overlaying the gorgeously wrecked glamour of his entire career onto the film, draping the virtue of his carnal vices over a package that’s already prodigiously overstuffed.

Martin Scorsese was at the Berlinale this week for the first time in a decade. His presence to collect an honorary Golden Bear was a reminder of the festival’s glories of yesteryear.

In decades past, Scorsese touched down in Berlin with major works such as Raging Bull (1981), Cape Fear (1992); Gangs of New York (2003 ), Shine a Light (2008) and Shutter Island (2010). It feels a long time since the event — traditionally one of the world’s great cinema showcases — has attracted such movies. In recent years the studio splashes have dried up.

So have memorable movies from A-list arthouse filmmakers. Scorsese this week sang the praises of the event for the encouragement it had given him as an emerging filmmaker. Citing Brian de Palma’s Silver Bear win for his second film Greetings in 1969, Scorsese said the prize had marked a turning point for unknown, independent American directors such as himself, de Palma,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. On the subject of Metrograph’s “It Happens to Us,” we also encourage donations to local abortion funds, while the theater will be donating 50 of all proceeds from ticket sales towards Naral Pro-Choice America and additional U.S. reproductive rights orgs.

Metrograph

Emma Myers has curated “It Happens to Us,” a look at stories of abortion on film that begins with work by von Sternberg and William Wyler. With the release of Lux Æterna, Gaspar Noé has curated a series of witches onscreen, while if you’ve ever wanted to see Bulletproof Monk on 35mm we recommend “Hong Kong Goes International“; films by John Waters play in a series on Cookie Mueller.

Film at Lincoln Center

The Hong Sangsoo double-feature series continues.

Anthology Film Archives

Essential Cinema has two of Ozu’s best, There Was a Father and I Was Born,...

Filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a central figure in shaping films after World War II and became one of the major auteur filmmakers of the New German Cinema. His works varied from melodrama (The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant), to sci-fi noir (World on a Wire), to gothic thriller (Chinese Roulette), and ending in gay fantasia mixed with murder (Querelle). To say that Fassbinder's work was extensive is a severe understatement. With at least 21 films created within his short life of 37 years, he was an intense talent that left us far too soon. With that intensity, there are various stories of how he treated his actors and friends. I heard one of these tales spun regarding how he would film without sound in order to torment his actors and dub their voices in post-production. Ironically, he satirizes his own alleged bullying in Beware a Holy Whore so what is...