The Artist of Intimate Dialogue |
Wim Wenders, one of the most distinguished contemporary film directors, was a featured guest at the 34th FEST, the Belgrade film festival.
By Milorad St. Ilić, Photo by Dušan I. Dimitrijević & Aleksandar Dragutinović |
The arrival of the celebrated German film director Wim Wenders was undoubtedly one of the most significant events at this year's FEST. Wenders' latest film "Don't Come Knocking" was awarded the best film at this year's festival.
Wenders, one of most awarded and intriguing European directors, is the current president of the European Film Academy. His first works, which related to postwar Germany and the Americanization of its culture, attracted attention from audiences and film critics around the world. At the time, his films created a particular atmosphere, strong characters and expressed cunning philosophical views. |
| Ernst Wilhelm Wenders was born in Düsseldorf (Germany) in 1945. He initially studied medicine and philosophy, but in 1966 he moved to Paris to learn painting. He was a frequent visitor at the "Cinémathèque Française" and a year later he returned to Germany to enroll in the Grand School for Film & Television, in Munich. At the same time, his film reviews were published in a number of magazines. In 1977 he filmed "The American Friend", which attracted the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, who later invited him to the USA. From then on began his American film career. |
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Mr. Wenders, when did your interest in film begin?
- Films made by German veterans, who survived the previous times, were like red scarves for the generation born at the end of or soon after the World War Two. Fassbinder, Herzog, Chamonix, Shländorff and Kluge launched a "junge kino", a movement for fresh film - similar to what young authors of the new wave did in France, or the revolutionaries of the "black wave". Fassbinder died. Herzog, after a long period of abstinence, appeared with "The Unbreakable". Shländorff revived a studio in Babelsberg (Berlin) but he sacrificed a good share of his career in this project. I belong to that generation. |
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Wim Wenders, a guest at FEST 2006, paid a visit to the Yugoslav Film Archive. He was sincerely excited and fascinated by the material he saw.
Wenders agreed to be the honorary president of the Nitrate Film Festival traditionally organised by the Yugoslav Film Archive. The same evening he was awarded the "Golden Stamp", the highest recognition given by the Yugoslav Film Archive. On this occasion his short film "Alabama: 2000 Light years from home" (1969) was shown.
Belgrade's Museum of Modern Art, the International Film Festival and the Haunch of Venison gallery from London exhibited a selection of photos from Wenders's cycle "Pictures of the Earth's Surface". During his stay in Belgrade, Wenders gave several lectures to our film students and closed this year's FEST. | |
What is your general view of contemporary film?
- I can say that I like documentary films very much, or films that are related to documentaries, in the sense that they are based on something real, and not fictional. I hate watching films when after ten minutes I can anticipate the end. I can't stand films that are
made in accordance with particular recipes or formulas. I like films that explore and study life. By watching a film you can feel and know whether film-maker participated in an industrial process or started their own adventure. |
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What are the trends in the international film industry?
- Trends have changed in the international film industry. In the 1990s, there was only one kind of film; stories of violence, action, with special effects, as if there had not been a place for a "small" intimate film. I'm excited to see that audiences are fed up with this, because it shows people are once again interested in feeling, in authorial film. |
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How do you find inspiration for films?
- I'm always trying not to repeat myself. I realised early on that as soon as you start to work on something that you know how to do well, you enter a routine that kills that which you're working on. I try my best to start work on each film from the "zero point". Sometimes I am successful, sometimes I fail. I never seek inspiration in other films, but in music, above all in rock'n'roll, painting, traveling and in life itself.
Your films are recognisable for their drawn quality and for music.
- All that I have learnt, I learnt through painting and music. There is less merit in the history of film and photography than in the history of art. To inspire myself I travel – my first and essential profession is that of a "traveler". Also, people inspire me – mainly people who do a job that is useful to others. Doctors, nurses, priests, teachers… |
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What is your view of present-day America?
- I expressed it in my previous film "Land of Plenty". People are confused and alienated, which is sad because I love America. But, the country suffers from a lack of information – it is narcissistically focused solely on itself. It thinks it is the center of the world, but in fact it is on the world's edge, without neighbours, alienated from the rest of the world.
My wish was to forget Germany prior to 1945, and become an American. Rock'n'roll was my religion. In America I found out that the "American dream" is lost so I've returned to Europe. |
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You are living in Berlin at the moment?
- And in Los Angeles. Everywhere where my profession takes me. Between the exhausting struggle to make "great films" – I'm also trying to film some personal projects, as was the "Buena Vista Social Club".
You are president of the European Film Academy?
- My belief is that it was extremely important to try to consolidate forces and resist the American cinema invasion. At the very beginning, it probably seemed like Don Quixote's fight, while the Felix Award looked like a caricature of the Oscar, but I'm convinced that we can already see fruits of the campaign. French, Spanish, and German films are the most viewed in their respective countries of origin. |
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How do you see yourself as a film director?
– I'm at the same time an old-school film-maker who looks at the sky and seeks a favourable moment to turn the camera handle, as well as an unsatiable video maniac whose camera never stops working because when it ceases to work the world – on which its lens is focused – will cease to exist. |
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You provoked an uproar at the Berlin Festival with the film "The Million Dollar Hotel", which was shown on a big electronic screen.
- One of my obsessions is to explore media frontiers. This is the task of every artist, I think. This film, which is being shown in regular distribution from film tape, fascinated me with its picture structure on the big electronic screen which brings closer the texture of dreams, or at least as I conceive of them. |
What is the story of your latest film "Don't Come Knocking"?
– The film "Don't Come Knocking" is a tragic comedy about a famous actor who always played the role of a hero and later learnt that he was only an extra in real life. |
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The role is entrusted to American artist Sam Shepherd who was also the scriptwriter for the same film. His partners are Jessica Lang, Tim Roth, Gabriel Mann, Sarah Poly and others. The main character, Howard – a westerns star – is stunned when he realises that what he acts in "cowboy films" is not his reality. Shepherd and I did not take Howard too seriously, and I would suggest the same to viewers. The end of the film instills hope that he might lead a better life. Howard sets off on a journey during which he renews his relationship with his mother, finds the woman with whom he was once deeply in love and also finds his daughter and son about whose existence he had not known anything at all. |
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How do you look at men-women relations in the latest film?
- Men and women have different views on the world. The American west is a world of men, but the men there are only dreamers while the women are those who bring decisions and have an impact on reality. In a strange way, men approach a conflict, for example when Howard sees his son for the first time, they almost have a fight prior to trading a word between themselves, while the women are those who involve in a dialogue. I think that Howard in the end understands this more clever manner and it is what gives hope. |
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Tell us something about the exhibition of your photos in Belgrade, your attitude towards photography and the similarities and differences between the arts of film and photography.
– In Belgrade, a selection of photos from an exhibition comprising fifty-five items – which I chose among thousands that had been snapped in over more than twenty years – was on display. The majority of my photos represent landscapes. I'm rather a photographer of locations than of people. In my films I'm forced to deal with themes, stories, dramas and lives related to people. In photography I emerge into something opposite. I'm completely alone. |
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What do you prefer – film or photography?
- It is impossible to make a choice. Yet, I have to give an answer: Music! |
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What is your opinion on friendship and the alienation of modern man, which is imbued in nearly all of your films?
– I have a lot of acquaintances and few friends. I foster a longstanding friendship with Shepherd with whom I worked on the film "Paris, Texas". Aside from the usual skirmishes in the "scriptwriterdirector" relationship, we have preserved our friendship though we are utterly different. I'm an urban man while he's a real cowboy. He is a rancher, first of all, then a father, a playwright and, finally, a writer. He is too old-fashioned and still uses a typewriter. Even when we are silent it seems as though we are engaged in an intimate dialogue. It is important that we understand each other and that we have remained normal people. |
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