Chinese Roulette - A German Film By Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad, in association with the Hyderabad Film Club, is screening 9 of the unforgettable and unsurpassed films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, from 20th to 26th August, at the Prasad Labs Preview Theatre.

Today, the last day, Chinese Roulette will be screened. Industrial magnate Gerhard Christ, convinced that his wife and daughter are elsewhere, takes his longtime French mistress Irene on a weekend tryst to his sprawling chateau. Upon arrival, he is shocked to find his wife Ariane on the floor with her lover, his assistant Kolbe.

The uncomfortable situation becomes even more fraught when their crippled daughter Angela, who secretly planned the ménage à quatre, shows up with her mute governess, Traunitz, and a small army of grotesque dolls. In the background hover a sinister housekeeper named Kast and her ambiguous, very blond son Gabriel.

As the adulterous Christs come to terms with their respective infidelities, Angela tries to play them and their lovers off each other. In the film's final sequence, she orchestrates a psychologically vicious truth game, called Chinese Roulette, involving everyone in the chateau. Its revelations lead to a shocking climax.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was born in 1945 and died in 1982. He was one of the most significant directors of the "New German Cinema". In just 13 years, between 1969 and 1982, he made 44 films. He wrote 14 plays, revised six others and directed 25. He wrote 4 radio plays and 37 screenplays and worked on a further 13 scripts with other writers. Fassbinder's films are among the most valid social documents produced between the late '60s and early '80s in Germany; his plays are among the most performed of any post-war German dramatist.

Please contact Goethe-Zentrum at 6552-6443 or Bh S S Prakash Reddy of the Hyderabad Film Club at 2373-0841/93910-20243 for further details.