presents

Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day

Commissioned to make a working-class family drama, up-and- coming director took the assignment ABOUT THE RESTORATION and ran, upending expectations by depicting social realities in West from a critical—yet far from cynical—perspective. Over This new 2K digital restoration of Eight Hours Don’t Make the course of several hours, the sprawling story tracks the everyday a Day was created using the 16 mm reversal positive, triumphs and travails of the young toolmaker Jochen (Gottfried which was digitized and restored by ARRI, under the John) and many of the people populating his world, including the artistic direction of Juliane Maria Lorenz. Funding woman he loves (Hanna Schygulla), his eccentric nuclear family, was provided by the Museum of Modern Art, and his fellow workers, with whom he bands together to improve Filmförderungsanstalt, Film und Medien Stiftung NRW, conditions on the factory floor. Rarely screened since its popular but ARRI Media, the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, controversial initial broadcast, Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day rates RWF Werkschau, and Verlag der Autoren. as a true discovery, one of Fassbinder’s earliest and most tender experiments with the possibilities of melodrama.

West Germany | 1972–73 | 478 minutes | Color | Monaural | In German with English subtitles | 1.37:1 aspect ratio | Screening format: DCP

Booking Inquiries: Janus Films Press Contact: Courtney Ott [email protected] • 212-756-8761 [email protected] • 646-230-6847 PRODUCTION HISTORY By Juliane Maria Lorenz, president of the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation

“We wanted to encourage people,” said producer had just seen the feature film he wanted to start as soon as possible, if Rainer Werner Fassbinder about his first and thought it showed that it was all right with the gentlemen.” The work for television, Eight Hours Don’t Make Fassbinder had something going for him, filmmaker then began laying out the details a Day, which began airing in late 1972. and so he got his telephone number, set up of the first day of shooting, including his With the sprawling working-class story, the a meeting, and drove over. In his gentle and plans for a complicated tracking shot, for director sought to challenge “what people charming way, Fassbinder communicated which he would need a dolly and camera usually expect workers to be.” He didn’t that he was willing to come on board for tracks and a lot of extra lighting. “How long want to portray their daily lives as gray the series, but he asked for something in do the camera tracks need to be, Dietrich?” and dismal, as would have been the more exchange: he wanted Märthesheimer to he asked, and Dietrich Lohmann described conventional approach. Instead, he wanted ensure that WDR would contribute the exactly what was necessary. And that’s the viewers to identify with his characters remaining funds needed for The Niklashausen way it went. The gentlemen were amazed. and see the possibilities they created for Journey, a film he was planning at the time. By the end of the first weeks of shooting, themselves by acting in solidarity with a That same day, Märthesheimer agreed to he had their complete respect: he followed group. Fassbinder intended his workers Fassbinder’s terms. the schedule on every day of shooting, to be active personalities who take sometimes even saving time. There were 105 themselves seriously, have fun after work, Contrary to Fassbinder’s practice of shooting days, with a budget of 1.375 million and are deeply involved in family life and in overseeing the making of his own films, deutsche marks. relationships with friends. This perspective the WDR took over responsibility for the was completely new for Westdeutscher entire production of Eight Hours Don’t Make Production on Eight Hours Don’t Make a Rundfunk (WDR) when commissioning a Day. Märthesheimer describes it vividly: Day took place from April to August of producers from the public broadcaster “I made sure Mr. Fassbinder understood 1972. The first episode was broadcast on began pursuing the project. he could have a complete production setup Sunday, October 29, in prime time, at 8:15 with all the frills as long as he said what p.m.; the next four showed on Sundays at Rainer Werner Fassbinder was in his he wanted in the first production meeting. the same time, though at long intervals—on midtwenties and living in —already Then he came with me and his director December 27, January 21, February 18, and a prolific figure in the theater and behind of photography, Dietrich Lohmann, into March 18—which was very unusual, then the camera—when Peter Märthesheimer this windowless, air-conditioned, neon-lit as it would be now. The series drew mostly contacted him, in the spring of 1970, to conference room where around twenty well- negative reactions from West German suggest he should take on writing and dressed gentlemen awaited him: all heads critics, who saw it as unrealistic in its directing duties for a family drama. Who of departments—lighting, set, production optimism, but audiences were nonetheless would turn such a chance down? Not design, etc.—all of them experts in their enthusiastic. Millions of viewers watched Fassbinder, anyway. Märthesheimer’s fields, and all of them obviously skeptical these TV events, with families switching description of his first meeting with the and expecting to be in for a long, confused on the television in West Germany and filmmaker, included in my book Chaos as afternoon with one of these artists. I began also East Germany, in areas where the Usual: Conversations About Rainer Werner my speech introducing him and the project, broadcasting frequencies reached into the Fassbinder, is very entertaining. The and Mr. Fassbinder interrupted me, saying territory of the GDR. REFLECTIONS ON EIGHT HOURS

Hanna Schygulla “I think the basic idea had to do with real (Marion) anarchy in a positive sense, that everybody can be emancipated by using common “We talked about sense. Free from authority, being self- love through the lack determined and able to change society. of love, or tolerance Everyone—people in the audience, the through intolerance, theater director, and the actor. And that was etc. That was just the way we expressed packed into a ‘normal’ family series. In a ourselves, because of what had gone before certain sense a practical utopia—and that . . . As a generation, we were skeptical about was the provocation. I remember the bad all the values we had learned, and we asked reviews. They said the series was unrealistic. ourselves how it was possible that all these Workers were asked and quoted: ‘What a lot values didn’t prevent what had happened.” of bunk, we don’t do that kind of thing, we Rainer Werner Fassbinder are decent workers.’ I remember a photo of

“[Marion] already knew, in a lighthearted me in a TV magazine with the headline ‘Ugly “Marion, Grandma, Gregor, and way, what direction to go in—and motivated is the new beautiful!’” the others are different from [Jochen] too. He was the one who had to dare. workers as we expect them But she encouraged him to think it would be to be or as they are sold to us worth it and it would work out.” Irm Hermann on television and elsewhere, (Irmgard) because they are not such “I saw Luise Ullrich [who plays Grandma] in wrecks . . . There is a spark of [Max Ophuls’s 1933 film] Liebelei. Fantastic, “When the revolution utopia with [them].” she was just fantastic. But [Werner] Finck began in ’68, it [who plays Gregor, her companion], he was set us free from “Jochen and Marion, they love at home in the absurd. Because he was so conventional ideas each other—it can be wonderful strange. That was a good idea, the two of them.” and chains. And of course Eight Hours Don’t to be in love, because there Make a Day was a contribution to that.” are chances, when love makes

you think of something. It Gottfried John “[Fassbinder] was ambitious enough, and he must be wonderful, to think (Jochen) was fast, in his ideas that he developed with of characters, who think of Peter Märthesheimer. It was obvious that something and have chances “Even beforehand, it he was going to make it. We were onstage in and—I know it is wonderful!” got off on the wrong Bremen at the time. Yes, and then he wrote foot. I had long hair, Eight Hours . . . That was not easy. He was “Grandma and Gregor are and I heard from other completely stressed out. I didn’t see him two people who are doing people that the workers in Eight Hours Don’t like that very often. Because there was time something with their old age Make a Day all had short hair . . . So I say, pressure, there was a deadline. There were . . . I wish for my grandma that ‘Not with me . . . You can tell Fassbinder, the deadlines that had to be met, and then he I had thought of Grandma worker Jochen I’m playing, he wears his hair would get together with Märthesheimer. and Gregor twenty years long.’ I remember how surprised I was that a Anyway, it was hard because he had to deliver ago or someone else and my group making a project on having the courage what they wanted. It wasn’t his own film, grandma would have seen it and to stand up for your beliefs, on resistance with his own ideas; he’d been hired to do it. wouldn’t vote for the German against meaningless rules, was following the And that was difficult for him. And that really Conservative Party today and orders of their ‘meister’—which is what they put even more demands on him.” would be busy with something were already calling him. Hanna Schygulla other than dying.” was the only one who didn’t join in this “It was a challenge for [Fassbinder]. I think group behavior. Anyway, the meister accepted he really enjoyed it. At the time, he also “We all know the moments my long hair. But we didn’t really get along so wanted to have me there with him. If I wasn’t when we’re ‘in the same boat’ well back then, didn’t talk much. Just sort of acting, then I was an assistant or script with a couple of others and looked at each other.” girl. I stood next to Fassbinder behind the suddenly we feel everybody is in camera, and we watched dozens of actors in it together and something can “And then I said to him, ‘They’re all saying front of the camera—in different genres—it happen that’s good for everyone you’re a genius. What do you think that is?’ was a special kind of acting school for me. and no one is alone. It’s also And he says, ‘Genius is easy when it’s easy Fassbinder and I, after a while we looked at about that.” for you to do something that’s hard for other each other and we knew who was good and people.’ I thought that was a good sentence.” who wasn’t.”