Wim Wenders
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (German: [ˈvɪm ˈvɛndɐs]; born 14 August 1945) is a German filmmaker and playwright, who is a major figure in New German Cinema.[1] Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals. He has also received a BAFTA Award and been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award.
Wim Wenders
Filmmaker, playwright, photographer
1967–present
Wenders made his feature film debut with Summer in the City (1970). He earned critical acclaim for directing the films Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976), later known as the Road Movie trilogy. Wenders won the BAFTA Award for Best Direction and the Palme d'Or for Paris, Texas (1984) and the Cannes Film Festival Best Director Award for Wings of Desire (1987). His other notable films include The American Friend (1977), Faraway, So Close! (1993), and Perfect Days (2023).[2][3]
Wenders has received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature: for Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Pina (2011), and The Salt of the Earth (2014). He received a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video for Willie Nelson at the Teatro (1998). He is also known for directing the documentaries Tokyo-Ga (1985), The Soul of a Man (2003), and Pope Francis: A Man of His Word (2018).
Wenders has been the president of the European Film Academy since 1996 and won an Honorary Golden Bear in 2015. He is an active photographer, emphasizing images of desolate landscapes.[4][5] He is considered an auteur director.[6]
Early life and education[edit]
Wenders was born in Düsseldorf into a traditionally Catholic family. His father, Heinrich Wenders, was a surgeon. The Dutch name "Wim" is a shortened version of the baptismal name "Wilhelm". As a boy, Wenders took unaccompanied trips to Amsterdam to visit the Rijksmuseum. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine at the University of Freiburg (1963–64) and philosophy at the University of Dusseldorf (1964–65), but dropped out and moved to Paris in October 1966 in order to become a painter.[7] He failed his entry test at France's national film school, IDHEC (now La Fémis), and instead became an engraver at Johnny Friedlaender's studio in Montparnasse.[7] During this time he became fascinated with cinema, and saw up to five movies a day at the local movie theater.
Set on making his obsession his life's work, he returned to Germany in 1967 to work in the Düsseldorf office of United Artists. That fall, he entered the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF).[7] Between 1967 and 1970, while at the HFF, he also worked as a film critic for FilmKritik, the Munich daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, Twen magazine, and Der Spiegel.[7]
Wenders completed several short films before graduating from the Hochschule with a 16mm black-and-white film, Summer in the City (1970), his feature directorial debut.
Career[edit]
1970–1976: Film debut and early work[edit]
Wenders's career began in the late 1960s, the New German Cinema era.[8] Much of the distinctive cinematography in his movies is the result of a long-term collaboration with Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19] Wenders made his directorial film debut with Summer in the City (1970), his graduation project at the University of Television and Film Munich, which he attended from 1967 to 1970. Shot in 16 mm black-and-white by longtime Wenders collaborator Robby Müller, the movie exhibited many of Wenders's later trademark themes of aimless searching, running from invisible demons, and persistent wandering toward an indeterminate goal. Protagonist Hans (Zischler) is released from prison, and after searching through seedy West German streets and bars, he visits an old friend in Berlin.
Wenders then directed The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty, titled The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick in the United States. The film was adapted from Peter Handke's 1970 short novel. He then directed the period drama The Scarlet Letter (1973), adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel of the same name. From 1974 to 1976 Wender directed the Road Movie trilogy. The first film in the trilogy was Alice in the Cities (1974), which was shot in 16mm. The last two films are The Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976), the latter of which won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.
Photography[edit]
Wenders has worked with photographic images of desolate landscapes and themes of memory, time, loss, nostalgia and movement.[4][5] He began his long-running project "Pictures from the Surface of the Earth" in the early 1980s and pursued it for 20 years. The initial photographic series was titled "Written in the West" and was produced while Wenders criss-crossed the American West in preparation for his film Paris, Texas (1984).[7] It became the starting point for a nomadic journey across the globe, including Germany, Australia, Cuba, Israel and Japan, to take photographs capturing the essence of a moment, place or space.[36]
Personal life[edit]
Wenders lives and works in Berlin with his wife, Donata.[7] He has lived in Berlin since the mid-1970s.[37] He is an ecumenical Christian; as a teenager he wished to become a Catholic priest.[38] He supports German football club Borussia Dortmund.[39]
In 2009, Wenders signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski, who had been detained while traveling to a film festival in relation to his 1977 sexual abuse charges, which the petition argued would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely" and argued that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door to "actions of which no-one can know the effects."[40][41]
From 1979 to 1981, Wenders was married to the American actress and singer-songwriter Ronee Blakely.
1986–1992
1993–1995
2004
2006
2011
2012
2014
2015
2016
2017/2018
Installation art
2019
2020
2022
