 | |
| Author | Ian Penman |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| Publisher | Fitzcarraldo Editions |
Publication date | 19 April 2023 |
| Pages | 200 |
| ISBN | 978-1804270424 |
Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors is a book about the German filmmaker, writer and actor Rainer Werner Fassbinder, written by the English journalist Ian Penman. It was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2023. [1]
Inspired by Fassbinder's way of working, the book was written in three months and largely consists of fragments and personal reflections. Penman, a music critic, describes how he in the 1980s had a similar relationship to Fassbinder's films as he had to albums by his favourite bands. The book sketches Fassbinder's life story and context within the postwar German society and the New German Cinema. [2]
Anthony Quinn of The Guardian wrote that Fassbinder's and Penman's stories become intertwined, including their histories of drug use, and that Penman's scepticism to some of Fassbinder's films gives the book complexity. [3]
Time Out selected Fassbinder: Thousands of Mirrors as one of the 15 best books of 2023, calling it a work that provides "a proper sense of how one can really wallow in both Fassbinder's massive body of work and his personal mythology" and "a delightful, emotive and appropriately flashy ode". [4]
Werner Herzog is a German filmmaker, actor, opera director, and author. Regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema, his films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with unusual talents in obscure fields, or individuals in conflict with nature. His style involves avoiding storyboards, emphasizing improvisation, and placing his cast and crew into real situations mirroring those in the film they are working on.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker, actor, and dramatist. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement. Versatile and prolific, his over 40 films span a variety of genres, most frequently blending elements of Hollywood melodrama with social criticism and avant-garde techniques. His films, according to him, explored "the exploitability of feelings". His work was deeply rooted in post-war German culture: the aftermath of Nazism, the German economic miracle, and the terror of the Red Army Faction. He worked with a company of actors and technicians who frequently appeared in his projects.
Ian Penman is a British writer, music journalist and critic. He began his career as a writer for the NME in 1977, later contributing to various publications including Uncut, Sight & Sound, The Wire, The Face, and The Guardian. He is the author of Vital Signs: Music, Movies, and Other Manias.
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Fitzcarraldo Editions is an independent British book publisher based in Deptford, London, specialising in literary fiction and long-form essays in both translation and English-language originals. It focuses on ambitious, imaginative, and innovative writing by little-known and neglected authors. Fitzcarraldo Editions currently publishes twenty-two titles a year. Four of Fitzcarraldo's authors have gone on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature: Svetlana Alexievich (2015), Olga Tokarczuk (2018), Annie Ernaux (2022) and Jon Fosse (2023).
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