“Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day”: A Conversation Among Thomas Elsaesser, Juliane Lorenz, Laurence Kardish, and Fatima Naqvi

• Film
• Free

Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a screening of Juliane Lorenz’s new documentary “Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day: A Mini Series Becomes a Family Occasion” (40 min., with English subtitles), followed by a conversation about German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s trailblazing TV series “Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day” (1972) among Thomas Elsaesser, Juliane Lorenz, and Laurence Kardish, which will be moderated by Fatima Naqvi.

Juliane Lorenz’s documentary provides a behind-the-scenes look at the genesis, creation, and socio-political implications of “Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day.” Juxtaposing excerpts from the original series, interviews with cast members (including Hanna Schygulla, and Irm Hermann), and archival footage of Fassbinder and producer Peter Märthesheimer, the documentary elucidates the innovative and controversial nature of a series whose protagonists are factory workers. Lorenz balances historical context—emancipation in post-war German society, the social revolution of 1968—with the personal stories of the series’ cast and crew. The documentary thus serves as both an excellent introduction to the series itself, while also offering a fresh assessment of the series’ legacy.

In “Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day,” the five-part TV series produced by Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) in 1972, writer-director Rainer Werner Fassbinder explores working life of the time and asks how many hours of the day after working eight are left for social, family and political problems. “Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day” is a series about a working-class family combining socio-political and economic analysis with everyday stories. As an exciting and entertaining television series it addresses such issues as workers‘ participation and solidarity in the workplace, high rents, and anti-authoritarian upbringing. Fassbinder creates an alternative to televsion‘s illusions of a perfect world that speaks directly to a class usually unrepresentative. Actors playing main roles in the series include Gottfried John, Hanna Schygulla, Luise Ullrich, Werner Finck, Irm Hermann, Wolfgang Schenck, and Hans Hirschmüller. “Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day” has now been meticulously restored by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (RWFF), a project made possible by the support of the Museum of Modern Art, Film und Medienstiftung NRW, FFA, R.W.F Werkschau, ARRI and Verlag der Autoren. The restored version premiered at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival in the Volksbühne on Rosa-Luxemburg- Platz in 2017 and will have its U.S. premiere at MoMA on January 20, 2018, as part of “To Save and Project: The 15th MoMAInternational Festival of Film Preservation.”

Thomas Elsaesser is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Media and Culture of the University of Amsterdam. Since 2013 he is ​Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He is known for his book on “Fassbinder – History Identity Subject” (also translated into German and French). Among his recent books are: German Cinema – Terror and Trauma: Cultural Memory Since 1945 (New York: Routledge, 2013) and Film History as Media Archaeology (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016). He is also the ​writer-director of The Sun Island (strandfilm/ZDF, 2017), which premiered at the Kassel Documentary Festival in November 2017 and had its preview at Deutsches Haus at NYU in September 2017​.

Laurence Kardish is on the Board of the Fassbinder Foundation, New York. He organized The Museum of Modern Art’s major Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective in 1997 and its subsequent presentations and acquisitions of Berlin Alexanderplatz and World on a Wire. Between 1968 and 2012 as Curator, he organized over a thousand exhibitions at MoMA covering the history and culture of the moving-image, and is now teaching in the graduate program of SVA. Currently he is writing a critical biography of Shirley Clarke.

Juliane Maria Lorenz is an author-filmmaker, film editor, film producer, and the President of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (RWFF) based in Berlin and in New York (FF Inc.). From her initial meeting in 1976 with Fassbinder they developed an intense professional, artistic, and personal relationship which entailed fourteen films. After Fassbinder died in 1982, she continued to be a highly acclaimed European film editor and collaborated with other renowned author-filmmakers, among them Werner Schroeter and Oskar Roehler. In 1992, Lorenz initiated the comprehensive Fassbinder retrospectives in Berlin (1992) and at New York’s MoMA (1997), as well as at Centre Pompidou in Paris (2005). A milestone of Juliane Lorenz’s accomplishments was the restoration of Fassbinder´s Berlin Alexanderplatz, released in 2007, and Welt am Draht: New Master in 2010. Her most recent project, Fassbinder’s Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day, was presented at the 67^th International Film Festival in Berlin in 2017 and will be presented at MoMA this month. Juliane Lorenz lives in Berlin and also lived in New York for a long time.

Fatima Naqvi (moderator) is professor of German and Film Studies and chair of the department of German, Russian and East European Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University, where she has taught since 2000. She has written books on the perception of victimhood in Western European culture between 1968 and the new millennium (The Literary and Cultural Rhetoric of Victimhood, Palgrave 2007); the films of Michael Haneke (Trügerische Vertrautheit, Synema 2010); and the intersection of architecture and educational discourse in the works of Thomas Bernhard (How We Learn Where We Live; Northwestern 2016). One current research project focuses on the topic of “Fremdschämen”—the sense of shame for another—in contemporary media culture (special attention is devoted to the works of Ulrich Seidl, Erwin Wurm, and Elfriede Jelinek).

Events at Deutsches Haus are free and open to the public. If you would like to attend this event, please send an email to [email protected]. As space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event to ensure you get a good seat. Thank you!