Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wendersis a German filmmaker, playwright, author, photographer, and a major figure in New German Cinema. Among many honors, he has received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature: for Buena Vista Social Club, about Cuban music culture, Pina, about the contemporary dance choreographer Pina Bausch, and The Salt of the Earth, about Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth14 August 1945
CityDusseldorf, Germany
CountryGermany
An image that is unseen can't sell anything. It is pure, therefore true, beautiful, in one word: innocent. As long as no eye contaminates it, it is in perfect unison with the world. If it is not seen, the image and the object it represents belong together.
Whoever came up first with that saying a picture is worth a thousand words didn't understand the first thing about either one.
Don't worry about getting final cut, worry about making the best possible cut.
The beautiful image today means nothing. It's worthshit. In fact, it's almost as if it has the opposite effect, becauseyou're just like everything else out there.
Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism.
Cinema is a worldwide phenomenon.
For us music is mainly part of the entertainment world and is often a luxury.
Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.
Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie.
Entertainment today constantly emphasises the message that things are wonderful the way they are. But there is another kind of cinema, which says that change is possible and necessary and it's up to you.
So I am getting a little bored with defining one type of film as American and the other European or from somewhere else because the division is no longer true.
Ibrahim tells his story without a grain of complaint, and this was true for all of the band members. This is very much part of the Cuban spirit and soul.
On the contrary a film can promote the idea of change without any political message whatsoever but in its form and language can tell people that they can change their lives and contribute to progressive changes in the world.
Maybe it's the music that enables them to function like that, to always take everything as it comes and never complain about the misery, hardship or injustice.