Wenders, Wim

Category: Filmdirectors

Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (born 14 August 1945) is a German filmmaker, both of documentary films and fictional films; playwright, author, painter and photographer.  He is also a doctor of theology

He is considered one of the most important figures to have emerged from the “New German Cinema” in the 1970s and was a founding member of the German film distribution company “Filmverlag der Autoren”. In 1977, he established his own production company in Berlin, “Road Movies,” which has produced many of his films.

Wenders has had nine films in competition at the Cannes film festival; has won best director (Wings of Desire, 1987), the Grand Jury prize (Faraway, So Close!, 1993) and received the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or in 1984 for his movie Paris, Texas.  He won the Golden Lion at the 1982 Venice Film Festival for The State of Things. He has also been nominated three times for the Academy Awards for his films Buena Vista Social Club (2000), Pina (2012), and, most recently, The Salt of the Earth (2015).

Wenders has been the president of the European Film Academy in Berlin since 1996 and is Professor of Film at The European Graduate School / EGS, and  Professor für Narrativen Film at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg.

And he is a deeply spiritual man.

The faith and spirituality guiding Wim Wenders’s life

Wenders was born Ernst Wilhelm Wenders on August 14, 1945 in Düsseldorf, which then was located in the British Occupation Zone of what became the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal Republic of Germany, known colloquially as West Germany until reunification).Wenders was born into a traditionally Catholic family.

Wenders put in an appearance at Cannes along with his friend the Rev. Dario Edoardo Viganò, to take part in the Festival Sacré de la Beauté, a celebration of religion and art that has occurred alongside the film festival for the past four years.  Viganò is the prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications.  Wenders, then 71, met the monsignor at the 2004 Venice Film Festival, where the director was receiving the Vatican’s Robert Bresson Prize for “testimony, significant for sincerity and intensity, of the difficult passage in search of spiritual meaning in our lives.”

And here we have further confirmation

In other words, after the initial rejection of his religion, Wenders has followed the ‘hero’s journey', in search of his own Holy Grail.  And of course, it is reflected in all his films, Wenders haunting and beautiful Wings of Desire, is his masterpiece about trench-coated angels who dwell unseen among the inhabitants of Berlin.  But this quote rather indicates Wim’s spiritual life and his films and filmmaking are all part of the same canvas:

There are many ‘mystic’ characteristics in Wim Wender’s point of view.  He values the humanity in Jesus’s tuition, but abhors the twisting of his goodness by those who seek power in institutions.  Furthermore he sees good in the Qu’ran, and is attracted to many other Mystic movements.

Career and approach to film making

Wim’s father, Heinrich Wenders, was a surgeon.  Wenders initially studied medicine (1963–64) and philosophy (1964–65) in Freiburg and Düsseldorf inspired by the good work his father was doing. However, he dropped out of university studies and moved to Paris in October 1966 to become a painter. During this time, Wenders also became fascinated with cinema.

There is a telling quote in the observations which reveals the close ties Wim had with his father.  After he had plucked up the courage to tell his father he wanted to be an artist, his father simply smiled and said that he had wanted him to find that out for himself. 

Wenders’ early films, reflect his own longing for spiritual connection in allegories often based on the desire of men for women or vice versa – almost insatiable longing. 

Paris, Texas is perhaps the best example of this how the longing for connection, divine love and  ‘beauty’ [personified by actress Nastassja Kinski ] becomes entirely destructive, love turns to obsession.  Nastassja was in both the Wim Wenders dramas Paris, Texas (1984) and Faraway, So Close! (1993).

As time proceeded, the ‘sensitive’ also became more sensitive and Wenders’ later films attempt to concentrate on all that is mystical, or magical and ‘unseen’ rather than simply add to the appalling violent, loud and insensitive ‘entertainment’ churned out by Hollywood.  He too cannot watch horror movies!

Wenders left Germany in 1995 and moved to the USA.  He lived in the United States for about ten years, but always kept his German passport. He shot seven or eight films in Los Angeles,  but then decided he wanted to shoot one in German with German actors. The last time he had worked in Germany was 1992.

Later years

During his later years, Wenders has concentrated a great deal on his photography. He has/had a gallery in London called the Haunch of Venison, where his photographs are/were sold.  He produces six copies of each image. He has also shown personal photographs, which have never been put up for sale. and showed twenty-four of them for the first time in Berlin in 2001 and another twenty-six at the Guggenheim Bilbao, and then China, Australia, and New Zealand.

And his films and photographs are now very ‘of the moment’ dealing with climate change, the loss of spiritual connection and poverty of mind, spirit and purse!

Legacy

 In the autumn of 2012, the Wim Wenders Foundation in Düsseldorf was established.  It created a legally binding framework to bring together the cinematic, photographic, artistic and literary lifework of Wim Wenders in his native country and to make it permanently accessible to the general public worldwide. The non-profit foundation is intended to ensure that the whole body of work remains beyond the reach of any form of private self-interest.  All proceeds will be used to finance the purpose of the foundation: the promotion of the arts and culture through the preservation, restoration, research and distribution of Wenders’ work on the one hand and through the support of young talents in the area of innovative cinematic narration on the other.

References

In addition to his films, Wim Wenders has also written a book “Once” -  a travel diary along with text, a bit like a series of poems.

Full length feature films [selection]

• 1970 , Summer in the City -  First full-length feature film (Dedicated to The Kinks)
• 1972 , The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty (UK) or The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (USA) , Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter , Adaptation of a novel by Peter Handke
• 1973 , The Scarlet Letter -  Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe , Adapted from the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• 1974 , Alice in the Cities , Alice in den Städten , First part of Wenders' Road Movie Trilogy
• 1975 , The Wrong Move , Falsche Bewegung , Second part of Wenders' Road Movie Trilogy, with Nastassja Kinski
• 1976 , Kings of the Road , Im Lauf der Zeit , Third part of Wenders' Road Movie Trilogy
• 1977 , The American Friend , Der Amerikanische Freund , Adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game
• 1982 , Hammett -  Fictional story about Dashiell Hammett, American writer; based on a novel by Joe Gores
• 1982 , The State of Things , Stand der Dinge -  A film crew in Portugal shoots a black-and-white science fiction film about the survivors on a post-apocalyptic Earth, titled The Survivors. The shooting stops when the production runs out of film stock and money. In an abandoned hotel, the crew waits for money to arrive or a sign from vanished producer Gordon. As they grow restless and bored, the film depicts some of their philosophical thoughts and emotional reactions.
• 1984 , Paris, Texas – see observation
• 1987 , Wings of Desire -  Der Himmel über Berlin , Written with Peter Handke. A guardian angel is tempted to prefer human experience over the outsider's immortality.
• 1995 , Beyond the Clouds , Jenseits der Wolken , (with Michelangelo Antonioni)
• 2004 , Land of Plenty -  based on a story by Scott Derrickson, with Michelle Williams and John Diehl.  “The Land of Plenty was shot on digital video, in just 16 days, on a budget barely worthy of the word shoestring.".
• 2005 , Don't Come Knocking -  Script by Wenders and Sam Shepard who also played the main character.  Sam Shepherd is also a Pulitzer-winning playwright.
• 2015 , Every Thing Will Be Fine -  Drama
• 2016 , The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez -  Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez , based on the play for two persons by Peter Handke, filmed in 3D
• 2017 , Submergence -  Grenzenlos , Adaptation from war journalist JM Ledgard's novel
  
  

Wenders has been married 5 times and he worked with all of his wives on at least one movie:
With Edda Köchl: Alice in the Cities (1974), Summer in the City (1971) and The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972);
with Lisa Kreuzer: Alice in the Cities (1974), The American Friend (1977), Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976);
with Isabelle Weingarten: The State of Things (1982);
with Ronee Blakley: I played It for You (1985), and Lightning Over Water (1980) and
with Donata Wenders: Beyond the Clouds (1995), Arisha, der Bär und der steinerne Ring (1992), Buena Vista Social Club (1999), The End of Violence (1997), Lisbon Story (1994), Land of Plenty (2004) and The Million Dollar Hotel (2000).

Documentaries [selection]

• 1980 , Lightning Over Water - Documentary about the last days of Nicholas Ray
• 1982 , Room 666 - Chambre 666 , Short documentary interviews directors on the future of cinema, including Steven Spielberg, Jean-Luc Godard, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Filmed at Cannes
• 1985 , Tokyo-Ga -  Documentary about Japanese film director Yasujirō Ozu
• 1989 , Notebook on Cities and Clothes  -  Aufzeichnungen zu Kleidern und Städten , Documentary about Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto.
• 1995 , A Trick of Light -  Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky , the film made with the students of the Munich Film Academy is a combination of docudrama, fictional reenactment, and experimental photography to show the birth of cinema in Berlin where Max Skladanowsky and his brother Emil built a projector they called the Bioscop
• 1998 , Willie Nelson at the Teatro - features 10 of Willie Nelson’s songs, performed at Daniel Lanois’ (producer of Bob Dylan and U2) studio, a converted picture theatre in Oxnard, California. The film alternates between film and video footage and features Emmy Lou Harris on backing vocals
  
• 1999 , Buena Vista Social Club -  Documentary about Cuban musicians; made with Ry Cooder for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature:
• 2003 , The Soul of a Man -  Documentary about Blues musicians, from the doc series Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues
• 2007 , Invisibles -  Documentary, contributed segment "Invisible Crimes"
• 2011 , Pina -  Documentary about the late choregrapher Pina Bausch, in 3D, premiered Out of Competition at the Berlin Film Festival and for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature:
• 2014 , The Salt of the Earth -  Das Salz der Erde , Documentary about Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado for which he received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature:
• 2018 , Pope Francis: A Man of His Word , Papst Franziskus – Ein Mann seines Wortes , Documentary
  
  

Observations

For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.

• Film - Wim Wenders: Painter, Filmmaker, Photographer
• In Conversation with Wim Wenders and Donata Wenders - the Honorary Doctorate by Sabine Mirlesse
• Wenders, Wim - Buena Vista Social Club
• Wenders, Wim - Directs the music Video for "Souljacker Pt 1" by the Eels, 2001
• Wenders, Wim - Don't come knocking
• Wenders, Wim - Faraway, So Close
• Wenders, Wim - Lumière et compagnie
• Wenders, Wim - On the Pope Francis Documentary
• Wenders, Wim - Paris, Texas
• Wenders, Wim - Pina
• Wenders, Wim - Salt of the Earth
• Wenders, Wim - Submergence
• Wenders, Wim - Talking about the Land of Plenty film and Christianity
• Wenders, Wim - Ten Minutes Older - Twelve Miles to Trona
• Wenders, Wim - The End of Violence
• Wenders, Wim - To Each His Own Cinema - War in Peace
• Wenders, Wim - Tokyo-ga
• Wenders, Wim - Until the End of the World
• Wenders, Wim - Wings of Desire
• Wenders, Wim and Donata - On working together
• Wenders, Wim and Donata – On the influence of music
• Wenders, Wim – The role of film in myth making
• Wim Wenders on Painting and Film making and Time
• Wim Wenders prophecies Dream replay in the film Until the End of the World
• Wim Wenders talks about making movies that matter