This summer we present a long-awaited retrospective of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982), who seemingly overnight went from enfant terrible to being the driving force behind the New German Cinema, and one of the most influential artists of the postwar European scene, with a prodigious output as director, actor, author, and playwright. Including many films never before seen here, others long out of distribution, and many new 35mm prints, this exhibition offers us the first real opportunity to look at the full genius of Rainer Werner Fassbinder-and to view as a whole the portrait of postwar Germany his films comprise. We can also trace the impact of his work with a stock team of collaborators from the antiteater troupe, which included Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Ingrid Caven, Harry Baer, art-director and actor Kurt Raab, composer Peer Raben, and many others whose names and faces will become familiar territory for viewers this summer.With them, and through them, Fassbinder created a mirror for society in the individual soul of his characters, from the put-upon peddler in The Merchant of Four Seasons to the drug-addicted movie star of Veronika Voss, all of them playing a sucker's game, with only a director's love to lend them dignity. This he does precisely through art: Fassbinder, who escaped an unhappy childhood into the theater and cinema, was seemingly incapable of a boring shot, and yet able to infuse tenderness into the most daringly perverse situation. In this he surpasses even his Hollywood mentor, the German emigre Douglas Sirk, whose melodramas, Fassbinder said, "convinced (me) that love is the best, most insidious, most effective instrument of social repression." Despite a talent that was mature very early on, Fassbinder's "bad boy" reputation preceded him, ultimately to his death. When he died in 1982, at age 37, he had more films to his name than he had years. At that time Hanna Schygulla asked the question his films, in retrospect, seem to pose, "Did he die so young because he was in such a rush, or did he rush because he was destined to die so young?"The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Touring Retrospective is a collaboration between the Goethe-Institut/German Cultural Centers in the United States and Canada, The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (Berlin), and all local partner institutions; and is presented with the assistance of Lufthansa (Germany), Taurus Film (Munich-Ismaning), Inter Nationes (Bonn), and the Filmboard Berlin-Brandenburg (Berlin). The retrospective at the Pacific Film Archive is presented in association with the Goethe-Institut, San Francisco, and the Castro Theater in San Francisco; and with special thanks to The Museum of Modern Art, New York.We especially wish to thank, for their assistance, Brigitte Hubmann, Goethe-Institut, New York; and Ingrid Scheib-Rothbart, The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation.Exhibition Catalog on sale in the Museum Store ($16.50; members receive 10% discount).Rainer Werner Fassbinder, an illustrated 120-page book, combines critical essays with selections from Fassbinder's own writings and personal recollections by his associates, plus a complete annotated filmography. Published by The Museum of Modern Art, it is edited by MoMA Film Curator Laurence Kardish, in collaboration with Juliane Lorenz, Director of The Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation in Berlin. Thursday July 3, 1997