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Wim Wenders talks about making movies that matter
Identifier
028233
Type of Spiritual Experience
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A description of the experience
From Wim Wenders talks about making movies that matter June 1, 2017 - A.J. Goldmann
As a filmmaker I can tell you, you cannot intend to make a film that matters, many supposedly important films turn out to be totally insignificant.
But sometimes this miraculous thing happens, that a film that is dear to someone’s heart, like the filmmaker’s, becomes dear to other people’s hearts and all of a sudden, the fact that it matters appears as something that you do together – the audience as well as the filmmaker – and that you feel together. So I think the only thing that matters is these miraculous agglomerations of happiness and of meaning. That’s when you’ve touched on something that touched the audience and that the audience needed at that moment.
[On his website, Wenders lists some of his favorite films, including Jean Renoir’s “The Rules of the Game,” and Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story.” Neither is religious or spiritual in a conventional way. But their deep humanity and artistic sensitivity transmit insights into what it means to be alive.]
You see the thing that matters, not because it’s thrown at you, but because you can discover it,………. If you don’t feel you’re the only person who can make a film, then you better not touch it. If you really feel like that subject wants you and needs you, you need to answer to that responsibility..................
Coming up with a film in Berlin more than 30 years ago, I invented characters for a movie that were drawn a lot, yes, from the Bible and from Rilke. But I thought they were fictional characters, outrageously fictional. And then I made the movie. I had no clue how to make it. I made it without a script. And every day I got help, miraculously. And slowly I understood that these angels had their fingers in there: that they were giving me an incredible gift and I could only accept that I had to receive it and pass it on.
So I refuse any responsibility for ‘angel activity’ in this festival or anywhere else. But I was blessed to get to know them a little bit,”
“And I hope that all of you sometimes have that experience.”