“Life…Labor…Love,” the tagline from Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s lost family saga “Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day.” A revered filmmaker of New German Cinema, Fassbinder’s career sprawled only a short amount of time. Fassbinder was known for his quick turn around of projects, directing eight films in 1970.
“Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day” is a five-episode series made in 1972, after Fassbinder was commissioned to produce a working-class family drama for public television. Chronicling the life of Jochen, ‘Eight Hours’ takes a look at his work, family, and love life through the lens of 1970s-era West Germany. For the first time, this 1972 series will be seen by American audiences.
Of his films, Fassbinder once said, “I hope to build a house with my films. Some of them are the cellar, some are the walls, and some are the windows. But I hope in time there will be a house.”
Here is a synopsis and more background on the series:
The astonishingly prolific Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982) directed over 40 movies in 15 years. Yet one of his most sprawling works has remained unreleased in the U.S. until now: the epic 1972 EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY. Commissioned to make a working-class family drama for public television, up-and-coming director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took the assignment and ran, upending expectations by depicting social realities in West Germany from a critical—yet far from cynical— perspective. Over the course of five episodes, the project tracks the everyday triumphs and travails of the young toolmaker Jochen (Gottfried John) and many of the people populating his world, including the woman he loves (Hanna Schygulla), his eccentric nuclear family, and his fellow workers, with whom he bands together to improve conditions on the factory oor. Rarely screened since its popular but controversial initial broadcast, EIGHT HOURS DON’T MAKE A DAY rates as a true discovery, one of Fassbinder’s earliest and most tender experiments with the genre of melodrama.
“Eight Hours Don’t Make A Day” Theatrical Run will begin at the Film Forum March 14; Nationwide dates to follow.
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