One of the advantages of shooting film is the great longevity of film material. Even decades-old material can be scanned in the highest quality digital format available, allowing the copyright owners to  market the re-release in the best possible way. This can be seen in the re-releases of blockbusters like Star Wars, and is now also practiced for classic films of historic importance, like Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz.

Berlin Alexanderplatz, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, was shot between June of 1979 and April of 1980 on location in Berlin and in the Bavaria Studios in Munich. It is a mammoth 15-1/2 hour episodic exploration of the character of Franz Biberkopf, the "hero" of Alfred Döblin's acclaimed novel, as well as the Alexanderplatz area of Berlin that he inhabits. Fassbinder himself called it "a series of nasty little episodes each of which could provide the obscene popular press with the obscenest of front-page stories". Because of its close and intimate look at the human condition, and its many plots and subplots that are weaving in and out of the narrative, it is considered an important part of Fassbinder's body of work.

Originally shot on Regular 16 mm film for budgetary reasons, Berlin Alexanderplatz has been re-mastered to its original beauty by ARRI Film & TV. The footage was scanned on an ARRISCAN with 2K resolution, followed by touch-up and repair work as well as a new color grading. The artistic supervisor was Fassbinder cinematographer Xaver Schwarzenberger, who completely reworked the color grading of the material. "When we shot this material" he recalls, "we were told to shoot on 16 mm film, which was standard for a television production. Nobody thought about future uses back then." Juliane Lorenz, editor of Berlin Alexanderplatz and now the president of the Fassbinder Foundation, appreciated that "the ARRISCAN was able to extract the full range between light and dark that is contained within the 16 mm negative." The digital remastering is a joint project of ARRI, CinePostproduction and Bavaria Film.

The much heralded premiere of the re-mastered Berlin Alexanderplatz was at the Berlinale in Berlin in February of 2007. Having gone through the Digital Intermediate process, the work is now available as a pristine 35 mm print, HD master and as a DVD box set.

Jochen Hähnel & Marc Shipman-Mueller