Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982)

Fassbinder is one of the great auteurs of the New German Cinema. Incredibly productive, he directed something like 40 feature films before he died of a drug overdose in 1982.

Some of my favorites include:

• "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant" (1972), a highly stylized depiction of a lesbian love affair between a fashion designer and a working class girl.
• "Fox and His Friends" (1975), about a working class gay man who strikes it rich in the lottery and is mercilessly exploited by his new friends.
• "Satan's Brew" (1976), an absurdist comedy about a modern poet who decides to recreate the cultic world of Stefan George. (This one is a bit of an inside joke, so you probably won't like it unless you know about Stefan George.)
• "Lili Marleen" (1981), like "Marriage of Maria Braun," a melodramatic film about a strong woman. Lili is a successful actress in Nazi Germany ... with a Jewish boyfriend.