This was screened at the Vista cinema in Hollywood in August 1983, in its entirety (with a 2 hour break for dinner), making it the longest film ever to be commercially screened (15 hours, 21 minutes). Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany (1984), which is only a little longer at 15 hours and 40 minutes was shown in German cinemas and at the London Film Festival, but not in a single screening, instead being split across a weekend with a night in between the first and second parts.
Fassbinder dreamed of making a "parallel" movie specifically for theatrical distribution after the completion of this film. The cast list he made included Gérard Depardieu as Franz Biberkopf and Isabelle Adjani as Mieze.
When the film arrived in the United States, it was first shown on public television. Then, the film was shown in "theater installments" and every night, a theater would show two episodes.
Michael Ballhaus, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's longtime collaborator, was the film's original cinematographer. He quit during pre-production, fed up with Fassbinder's irrational behavior (which included refusing to speak to Ballhaus, communicating with him through an assistant instead). According to Ballhaus, this was Fassbinder's way of "punishing" him for deciding to shoot a different movie with another director after their previous collaboration, The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979).
It took nearly a year to make this series.