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Monthly Screenings

Wim Wenders: A Tribute

Wim Wenders was born in August 1945, a few months after the end of World War II in Düsseldorf. He arrived to art after a few semesters studying medicine and philosophy, at the end of which he moved to Paris to study art. At the end of 1967, he returned to Munich and studied film, and in 1970 began directing his first film, Summer in the City. He was part of the wave of young filmmakers that swept German cinema in the early 1970s and was named "the new German cinema". Among the most prominent of its members were Volker Schlondorff, Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean-Marie Straub and others. These artists expressed their displeasure with German cinema of that time. Soon each of them turned in different directions. Fassbinder created radical cinema, Herzog was interested in existential questions, and Wenders turned to exploring the human psyche, against the backdrop of life in  Germany and Europe of those days. Wenders learns to stylize his questions through the genre of the road-movie - an essentially American genre - through which he leads his protagonists, mainly silent and restless men, through landscapes that take an active part in the plot. For Wenders, the story is the journey and the hero is the traveler, that is, those who are wandering, restless, seeking redemption for themselves. This turmoil appears in a series of key works of the 1970/80s.

This month's program focuses on this chapter in Wenders' career, and ends with his most prominent films, Wings of Desire and Notebook on Cities and Clothes - two very different films that, in their own way, bring Wenders’ work to its peak. Here Wenders best articulates his humanistic vision of fraternity and freedom through cinematic means, while the image of the road expresses the possibility of connection and friendship rather than escape and loneliness. The great changes in Europe and around the world that will follow soon will make Wenders' vision a reality.

Alice in the Cities

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 110 minutes

What can a melancholy German photographer do when an unknown young lady deposits her wise-looking 9-year-old daughter in his hands and disappears? Off they go, tracking back and forth to the phantom house of Alice’s grandmother.

Wim Wenders – Short Films

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 54 minutes

Same Player Shoots Again - the same shot is repeated five times, but always in a slightly different hue. | Silver City Revisited - Long shots of urban landscapes which express a longing for heavenly speechlessness. | Reverse Angle: N.Y.C March 82 - Wender`s impressions from the Big Apple.

Wrong Move

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 95 minutes

Wilhelm wants to be a writer but feels he lacks life experience so he hits the road on a poetic and symbolic journey of self-discovery. A free, haunting adaptation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister which speaks about the German present. 

Kings of the Road

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 180 minutes

After crashing his Volkswagen into a river, a man, fleeing his wife and kids, joins up with an itinerant film projectionist repairman who travels along the border between East and West Germany. 

The American Friend

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 127 minutes

The American Friend is a suspenseful statement about American gangster films and the Americanization of European cinema and lifestyles. The story centers on a German picture-framer hired to assassinate a mobster.

Paris, Texas

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 147 minutes

A man, who disappeared without a trace, reappears in the Texas desert after four years and tries to confront his past. Wim Wenders infuses his private style with elements of the western, the family melodrama, and the road movie.

The Brothers Skladanovsky

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 80 minutes

Wim Wenders and his students` tribute to the Skladanovsky brothers, whose Bioskop projected pictures in Berlin`s Wintergarten starting early November 1895, eight weeks prior to the Lumiere brothers first public show in Paris.

Notebook on Cities and Clothes

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 81 minutes

Wim Wenders examines the work of world famous Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto. The film can be interpreted in a variety of ways: a road movie, a poetic testimony, or an experimental documentary about a typical Wenders hero.

Onsite Screening

Wings of Desire

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 130 minutes

Two angels are sent to earth to minister to the people of modern-day Berlin. One eventually falls in love and decides to relinquish his immortality in order to become human. Wings of Desire, which became an instant classic, is a hymn to life, love, and friendship. 

Tokyo Ga

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 92 minutes

Wenders’ tribute to the great Japanese maverick, Yasujiru Ozu. “The trip to Tokyo was in a way a pilgrimage,” says Wenders about the filmmaker who was so Japanese and yet so universal in his work.

The State of Things

Dir.: Wim Wenders
| 120 minutes

A documentary-style film about a science-fiction film crew working in Portugal. The “State of Things” refers to the physical and emotional state of the crew.