Moma retrospective Fassbinder

The filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder is remembered as one of the masters of New German Cinema. He was equally well known for being a workaholic: over the course of 13 years, from 1969 to 1982, he directed more than 40 productions, most of which were feature films, as well as several TV serials and one ambitious, 931-minute TV mini-series, Berlin Alexanderplatz. To mark the North American premiere of Berlin Alexanderplatz and celebrate the acquisition of a newly remastered version of the film, the Museum of Modern Art in New York recently screened a selection of Fassbinder films from its collection. MoMA called on Moleskine to create a customized notebook for the occasion.

Fassbinder was an edgy and always surprising filmmaker, as well as a penetrating social cartographer. The director wrote screenplays or adapted existing work for his films himself; he also filled the positions of art director on most of the early films, editor or co-editor on many more, and found time to act in several others. His films provide an incisive portrait of Germany and Germans, pre- and post-war, via ironic and nearly plotless parodies of Hollywood genre cinema. They are often experimental in form, always with a provocative political edge, yet they remain decidedly relevant to contemporary life in the West.

Having already worked with Moleskine on earlier customization projects, MoMA knew the value offered by limited edition Moleskine notebooks. MoMA choose to deboss the filmmaker's signature, the logo of the museum and of the Fassbinder Foundation on the cover of the Moleskine, as it has done with other custom notebooks in the past, providing a striking graphic composition that inherently links the two names in the minds of recipients. The date and details of the event were silk screened on the flyleaf of the notebook, making the notebook a very special reminder of event. The customized paper band featured the tiles of many of Fassbinder's best-known works.

MoMA presented the customized Moleskine notebooks to special guests attending the opening of the Fassbinder retrospective, ensuring that its most valued patrons can take home a reminder of its commitment to preserving the work of the cinema's greatest directors.