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
Neither Rainer Werner, nor any of us could have succeeded, or produced the number of films that we did, just on our own. We showed our films to each other, discussed them vigorously and rarely agreed.
I've never been anywhere in my life like it and I only really noticed it when I returned to Los Angeles and then Berlin. Everybody is much better off in these places, there is not poverty like in Cuba, but everybody complains about things.
Any movie that has that spirit and says things can be changed is worth making.
Many French directors, having now realised there was no more real criticism, that the standards of the past have gone, are very offended about the quality of film criticism.
Before you say cut, wait 5 seconds
The culture of independent film criticism has totally gone down the drain and this seems to come with the territory of the consumer age that we are now living in.
It's a great lesson in modesty that you realize you're illiterate in a field that you think you're an expert in.
The world of fashion. I'm interested in the world, not in fashion! But, maybe I was too quick to put down fashion. Why not look at it without prejudice? Why not examine it like any other industry, like the movies for example?
Loving photography and wanting to be a painter, it all ended up in the process of filmmaking. It's strange professionally be to connected because it connects you to architecture, it connects you to painting, it connects you to writers, to actors. It connects you to really all of the arts.
But I think that the spirit of protectionism would be the grave of European cinema. You cannot protect something by building a fence around it and thinking that this will help it survive.
It's almost scary how stylish things can look if you take the color out - how much more you see the essence of things and how much more something can appear elegant.
I remember that even my first impression of Italian cinema was pictures by paparazzi because my mom was reading all of these trash magazines with paparazzo pictures.
What is generally referred to as American-style films are, in fact, studio productions.
If anything, I see myself as a witness. I'd also be pleased, if you'd call me an interpreter. I try to hear and see the message of a place and pass it on, into that other language, the universal one of images.