Juliane Lorenz
Born 1957
Juliane Lorenz was nineteen when she was hired to assist Ila von Hasperg (*) on Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Chinese Roulette. Beginning with Despair, she edited most of Fassbinder’s films thereafter, including Berlin Alexanderplatz, The Marriage of Maria Braun, Veronica Voss and Querelle, which she finished after his death. When she was twenty-four, she found him dead in their apartment (they were married). Lorenz then became the editor for Werner Schroeter (Malina, The Rose King), and since 1992, she has been head of The Fassbinder Foundation, producing and directing a feature documentary on him along with other projects.
(*) Ila von Hasperg, it should be noted, also edited Fassbinder’s The Stationmaster’s Wife as well as Werner Schroeter’s The Death of Maria Malibran, Ulrike Ottinger’s Ticket of No Return, and Bette Gordon’s Variety, along with many other films.
“Rainer loved editors. He felt himself to be an editor. He used to say: ‘I do my job on the set and you do yours in the editing room. You are a second director. You have to finish the film, it’s
your responsibility.’ He inflamed me with that idea and that’s how I grew up.”
—Juliane Lorenz interviewed by Roger Crittenden in “Fine Cuts: The Art of European Film Editing.” The full interview can be found in the Appendix.
