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Friday, May 29, 1981
7:30 PM
The Third Generation
“Fassbinder films are so packed (visually and aurally) with information, references, asides, questions and unexpected connections...that most other contemporary movies look puny in comparison.... The Third Generation has you sitting on the edge of your seat even before you are sure what it's about....” (Vincent Canby). The Third Generation is about contemporary terrorists in Germany, distinguished by Fassbinder from their predecessors (including the Bader-Meinhof cell) by (he believes) the fact that they lack conherent political beliefs. In Fassbinder's words, “they do not know what they are doing and the sense of doing it is in the doing itself, in the seemingly exciting danger, in the delusive adventure in this more and more frighteningly perfect system. To act in danger but without perspective, the ecstasy of adventure experienced in the absence of ulterior motive; this is what motivates The Third Generation.” Included in the cell of terrorists are Bulle Ogier and Hanna Schygulla. Eddie Constantine (quintessential gangster) plays the businessman who manipulates the conspirators to increase his sales in this black “comedy in six parts/ about party games...horror and madness/ just like the fairy stories/ they tell children....” (R.W.F.)
(In a Year of 13 Moons substituted)
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