The Many Faces of Frank Ripploh

A gadfly of the 1970s and ’80s West Berlin gay scene who at various times was close to—and occasionally appeared in the films of—major players of the New German Cinema including Rosa von Praunheim, Monika Treut, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Ulrike Ottinger, Frank Ripploh, who occasionally worked under the name Peggy von Schnottgenberg, ignited a firestorm of controversy with his sexually explicit, dazzlingly vital 1980 feature debut Taxi zum Klo, a queer cult classic that faced protests and film board ukases wherever it went. Accompanying Metrograph’s run of Ripploh’s zesty, lusty, glory-holes-and-all signature film, we’ll be screening films inspired by Ripploh (Gus van Sant’s Mala Noche; Ira Sachs’s Passages), or featuring his acting talents (Fassbinder’s Querelle, Ottinger’s Madame X: An Absolute Ruler, which “von Schnottgenberg” also served as assistant director).

Presented in collaboration with the German Film Office