Peer Raben

Producer-composer Peer Raben's career is intrinsically linked with German New Wave filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, with whom he collaborated on over 30 films. Raben's scores have become synonymous with some of the best of new German cinema. After working in theater, where he founded Munich's Action Theatre, Raben met Fassbinder and eventually moved into an apartment with him and actor Irm Hermann. Raben fronted the money to produce Fassbinder's gangster tale "Love is Colder Than Death" in 1969, for which he also composed the melodramatic score. He produced seven of Fassbinder's films throughout the early 1970s, memorably the mysterious family drama "Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? ." He worked alongside the often abusive and tyrannical Fassbinder--with whom he had a brief affair--at a breakneck pace. Fassbinder made over 40 films--many now classics--in just 15 years. The centerpiece of both of their careers, the 14-part miniseries "Berlin Alexanderplatz," which follows the post-prison life of the hulking Franz Biberkopf between the world wars, has the distinction of being the longest narrative film ever made. After defining the maudlin tone of post-World War II Germany in "The Marriage of Maria Braun" and shocking audiences and fans with the stylized electronic score to the gay seafaring romance " Querelle," Raben carried on after Fassbinder's death, contributing frequently to German cinema. In the early 2000s he was contacted by lauded director Wong Kar-wai, who hired him to score his love-and-sex drama " Eros."