Encounter RWF

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's extensive legacy of written material, which passed into the care of the DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in 2018, is a treasure of recent German film history that needs to be explored from many perspectives. The DFF project Encounter RWF aimed at exploring educational formats that are suitable to make Fassbinder's films relatable to young people today.

Six film education teams consisting of film educators and artists in five European cities (Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and Zurich) worked together with schoolchildren, youth groups, and students to explore Fassbinder's work in the context of relevant social issues. For this purpose, different film formats were being developed that provide innovative, artistic approaches to the Fassbinder collection and its auratic objects. All six groups intensively studied the diverse collection objects related to Fassbinder's work during research visits of several days to the archive and study center of the DFF in Frankfurt. On the basis of the archive visits, the teams developed their individual mediation formats and projects. The Austrian Film Museum has been a proud partner in this project.
 
The "Vienna Part" of this project concentrated on exploring Fassbinder's TV series Acht Stunden sind kein Tag (Eight Hours Don't Make a Day, 1972-73). During the 2022/23 school year, project leader Alejandro Bachmann and the Film Museum's head of education, Stefan Huber, worked with a class from the WMS/RG/ORG Anton-Krieger-Gasse and their teacher Jutta Steinkellner. They watched the series' five episodes in the Invisible Cinema; they discussed texts that appeared when the series was released and read excerpts from the script of a never completed episode. The students then wrote their own continuations to these excerpts and developed a visual concept for their new scenes in the form of a moodboard and storyboard.
 
A publication, to be released in February 2024, will finally bundle all results of the project and make them accessible in a creative way.

Projekt Encounter RWF | DFF Fassbinder Center
Rainer Werner Fassbinder at the Film Museum, 1975
Contact:
Stefan Huber
+43 1 533 70 54 Ext 13