"I saw David Lynch’s “The Elephant Man” (1980) when I was 15. I was completely bowled over. I found it so beautiful, strange and mesmerizing that I went back to the cinema every night for a week to see it."

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People often criticize my films for being pessimistic; there are certainly many reasons for being pessimistic but I don’t see my films that way. They’re founded in the belief that revolution doesn’t belong on the cinema screen but outside in the world. Never mind if a film ends pessimistically but exposes certain mechanisms clearly enough to show people how they work and the ultimate effect is not pessimistic. My goal is to reveal such mechanisms in a way that makes people realize the necessity of changing their own reality.

— Rainer Werner Fassbinder