Editing Rainer Werner Fassbinder (section)

====''In a Year of Thirteen Moons'' (1978)====

''[[In a Year of Thirteen Moons]]'' (''In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden'', 1978) is Fassbinder's most personal and bleakest work. The film follows the tragic life of Elvira, a [[transsexual]] formerly known as Erwin. In the last few days before her suicide, she decides to visit some of the important people and places in her life. In one sequence, Elvira wanders through the slaughterhouse where she worked as Erwin, recounting her history amid the meat-hooked corpses of cattle whose slit throats rain blood onto the floor.<ref>{{harv|Thomsen|2004|p=257}}</ref> In another scene, Elvira returns to the orphanage where she was raised by [[nun]]s and hears the brutal story of her childhood. Fassbinder's camera tracks the nun (played by his mother) telling Elvira's story; she moves with a kind of military precision through the grounds, recounting the story in blazing detail, unaware that Elvira had collapsed and can no longer hear it.

''In a Year of Thirteen Moons'' was explicitly personal, a reaction to his former lover Armin Meier's suicide.<ref>{{harv|Thomsen|2004|p=255}}</ref> In addition to writing, directing, and editing, Fassbinder also designed the production and worked as the cameraman. When the film played in the New York Film Festival in October 1979, critic [[Vincent Canby]] (who championed Fassbinder's work in the United States) wrote, "Its only redeeming feature is genius."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C02E6D71438E432A2575BC0A9669D946890D6CF|title=In a Year of 13 Moons (1978) Film: Fassbinder's 'Year of 13 Moons': Unalterable Condition|last=Canby|first=Vincent|date=18 October 1979|newspaper=The New York Times}}</ref>