The director born in Düsseldorf in 1945 grew up like an American teenager. In Oberhausen, where Wenders spent his youth, there were only "ice cream parlors with their jukeboxes" as cultural venues. At least that's how Wenders remembers his early years. The cinematic role models, photographs, and fantasy images from and about the United States have shaped him and determined his perspective.
Long, quiet camera shots, endless car rides, city and nature landscapes are already present in his German films, and later also in those made in the USA. Wenders has mapped the vast land and its myths. Later, he became a victim of Hollywood when he shot his Dashiell "Hammett" there in 1982 and got caught up in the machinery of the studio system. He processed the traumatic experiences in the wonderful black-and-white work "The State of Things" – his film about filmmaking.
Wim Wenders was twelve years old when his father gave him an 8mm camera. Ten years later, he would begin his studies at the University of Film and Television in Munich and make his first short films. By 1970, his first feature film was finished: "Summer in the City". Naturally, it was a road movie. Men embark on a journey of discovery to find themselves. This applies to Rüdiger Vogler and Hanns Zischler on their road trip across the country ("In the Course of Time," 1976) as well as to Harry Dean Stanton in Wenders' Cannes Palme d'Or award-winning "Paris, Texas". In a very unique way, it also applies to "Wings of Desire", when the two angels Damiel and Cassiel (Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander) observe, guide, and protect the people. Until one of the two extraterrestrials decides to become human and learn about love.
The multiple award-winning film from 1987, whose screenplay and fragmentary narrative form Peter Handke co-authored, is, in a way, the last great German film before the reunification: a chronicle of history that shows and preserves the wounds of the world war and the still divided city of Berlin.
Wenders is a romantic and dream traveler, the most extensive (and highly decorated) filmmaker of his home generation. He has shot in Lisbon and Cuba ("Buena Vista Social Club"), portrayed Yoshi Yamamoto in Japan, and assisted Michelangelo Antonioni as a co-director in his last work ("Beyond the Clouds", 1995). With Jeanne Moreau, he traveled "Until the End of the World" (1991) and with Sam Shepard to the Wild West ("Don't Come Knocking", 2005). He brought Campino before the camera, documented BAP, and the Wuppertal dance theater choreographer "Pina" Bausch in a film that received numerous awards both in Germany and internationally (including the European Film Award), as well as capturing Pope Francis documentary-style in 2018. His film about the Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado, "The Salt of the Earth", was nominated for an Oscar in 2015, while as a feature film director, he has reconnected with his former great style through the 3D melodrama "Everything Will Be Fine". In this sense, as the experiment with the muse camera constantly accompanies him.
Thus, his dual talent presents itself organically: The filmmaker Wenders and the photographer Wenders belong together, as shown by the exhibition "4 real & true 2" at the Kunstpalast museum in Düsseldorf or the installation "(E)Motion" at the Grand Palais in Paris. An artist whose passion is image-making and who continually addresses his skepticism towards image-making.
