Wim Wenders: No, I prefer not to know!
Well, it's about everything: cinema, music and architecture.
I was afraid that it would be about everything.
Let's start with architecture then.
Fantastic.
I saw Alice in den Städten (1974) when I started studying architecture.
You were a young man then!
I was 19 years old.
I was just a bit older when I made it. 28.
Besides the beauty and emotion of the story, the film made me think that cities could be poetry, not just buildings. Do you ever think about the influence that your movies had on the audience's perception of cities?
You might hope in the back of your mind that your films in the end influence people, but I certainly never spent any time thinking about it ! I love cit- ies and I have paid quite a lot of attention to the places where I shot, and I set my films in places and cities that I like. In some of them, cities are the leading actors. So I hope that my films have con- tributed to the image of, let's say, Lisbon, Berlin, Tokyo and Palermo, to name a few.
I remember you once said that buildings are architec- tural citizens and living beings. What do you mean?
Well, architecture, cities and places in general are in dialogue with us all the time. We think that we are the only ones talking, but I am quite convinced that there is a dialogue: places give us energy, feelings and memories; they create conditions in which we can work, relax, feel good or feel bad, and that is a dialogue, in my book. If I receive something and I give something back, then that is called "dialogue". Cities influence our actions, our thoughts and our attitudes, even our social behaviour; they influence us more than we probably like to admit.
I always felt cinema had an important job to help us decipher the city and help us get along with cities better. In a lot of action movies today, cities become a sort of enemy, but I dislike the image that cit- ies are places to avoid, or that they put obstacles in our way and make our lives miserable. Often, movies convey that if it weren't for cities, we would be much freer. In my opinion the opposite is true: cities free us; we can do what we want because we live in them. They provide us with opportunities more than they prevent opportunities from hap- pening. It probably started with Alice in den Städten that I tried to give cities a friendlier image and show people interacting with the city. No, not true! My very first film Summer in the City does that already. Even my shorts, like Silver City Revisited. Hey, even my titles were bursting with "cities"!
The first time I let a city take actively part in the action of a film was The American Friend (1977). It is set in Hamburg, Paris and a little bit in New York. These three cities have three very different func- tions in the film. People act differently in them and different feelings are conveyed by each of them. In the film we go directly back and forth between New York and Hamburg with just jump-cuts, as if it was one city, or as if in a split second you could move from one to the other. It was the first time I tried to show sort of a "simultaneous city" happening and I did it to make us realize how much influence cities have on us. When Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley walks through New York he is a different character from when he walks through Hamburg. Bruno Ganz, who plays the victim in the story, Zimmermann is his name, is in a haven in Hamburg, protected by his little streets, his little shop, his apartment and the familiar harbour across the street. When he goes to Paris, the city is utterly hostile to him. The subway in Paris is like a maze; it seems there is no way out: all of a sudden you realize that a city can be a matter of life and death. For Zimmermann, Paris is a deadly city, indeed. But he travels, he takes the plane and a train with his adversary, Tom Ripley, the crooked art dealer. He is much more in control of his actions, not a victim like Zimmermann, so he handles cities in a much lighter way, with a superior ease. When he is asked why he is in Hamburg, he says that he's trying to bring the Beatles back to Hamburg. He just makes a joke because it doesn't really matter where he is: he is a stranger everywhere. At least Bruno Ganz belongs to one city, Hamburg.
That is a very nice answer to a vague question... here's an even more generic one: seeing your knowl- edge of all these cities and regions in the world (Europe, America and Asia) all of which you have looked at very carefully, is there one place that can survive the recession better?
They will all survive, but in different ways. Europe is well equipped, because its history is nothing but cri- ses, countless wars, disasters and a host of different alliances. Through all this, Europe has become an almost utopian continent, because it has acquired a culture of dialogue. That is why I think that Europe can cope with future conflicts and menaces, bet- ter than the United States, for instance, that do not know much about dialogue. They don't know much about borders, either. The only one they real- ly know is Mexican and they deal with that one badly enough. So they don't know borders, they don't know other languages and they really don't know conflict. For them conflict immediately means aggression. Asia has different power structures and traditions and people are much more used to obeying, to believing in orders. In Europe nobody wants to do that any more. That age of blind obedi- ence is over, which is also the strength of Europe. People know better how to follow up their own decisions and stand up for themselves. In the US people are amazingly immature, manipulated and lost, at least in that huge "centre" between the two coasts. In Asia there is more reliance. Millions of Chinese migrant workers are out of work right now. Imagine that in Europe: you would have a revolu- tion. But not in China. People obey, at least for the moment... In India, the caste system has people following orders and fitting in. In Europe, this kind of structure is a thing of the past. I think with our diversity of cultures, our history of conflict and the respect for dialogue we had to learn the hard way, we are well equipped to address the huge changes that will necessarily happen in the next hundred years. I am glad I am back here!
What is your impression of Japan? What makes Tokyo so special to you?
I am greatly attracted to certain elements of Japanese (and Asian) culture. Japan was the first Asian country I got to know, so the things that attracted me there might have attracted me in oth- er countries just as well, but it was Japan that I went to, for a very concrete reason: it is the country where Yasujiro Ozu made his films! In my understanding and appreciation, his body of work represents the lost paradise of film making, not more and not less. So I wanted to know the country that was able to create these perfect movies. That's why I went to Japan before I went to Korea or China or Thailand or any of the other Asian countries I know.
Speaking of Japan, how did you become involved in making the film for the Rolex Learning Center in collaboration with the Japanese architects Sejima and Nishizawa?
Very simply: I received a letter from Sejima-San asking me if I might be interested in coming to look at their building, the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, then in its final construction phase, with the aim of talking about an installation that she wanted to show at the Venice Biennale of which she was going to be the curator. Her letter didn't come out of the blue – we had met in Los Angeles once, in 2000. And she knew I had shot several scenes of Palermo Shooting in a building she had designed in Germany, the design school in Essen. The photographer in that film, the leading character Finn, lives and has his (fictitious) studio in there... So Sejima sent me information on the Rolex Learning Centre and it looked very compel- ling: to have such a huge building on just one floor is quite unique, and on top of that: a building that lifts up from the floor in valleys and hills! I couldn't really imagine it just by seeing photographs, so we met in Lausanne. I spent two days in the building and at the end of these two days I told her yes, I really want to make this film, or installation.
The way you convey this building in moving images is fantastic. How long did it take you to understand it and why did you choose the three-dimensional technique?
I did not have a concept to begin with when I went there. I wanted to be open to the building. I soon realized that I did not understand it right away. After an entire day there, I was still not able to ori- ent myself, which I thought was a good sign for the building. With most buildings, you go through them twice and you know them by heart. In the Rolex Center, I wasn't really sure how it all connected. I rarely have that happen to me. It really feels like an infinite building... Amazing!
Why did you film the building in 3D?
To help with the orientation, for instance. This build- ing has features that other buildings do not have. There are no "hills" or "valleys" in any other buildings I know. In a flat view, in 2D, you never get a good per- ception or perspective of height, of ups and downs. On 2D, a downhill race always looks relatively bor- ing. The only way to overcome that deficit and give viewers an appropriate feeling of being there, was to enable them to sense the space. Only 3D can do that. As we sit here, you see me in three dimensions and I see you in three dimensions because we both have two eyes and I guess your two eyes work. So, in your brain you actually see me twice because you have two eyes: and your brain combines the two information streams. You actually see me upside down, but you have learnt to turn it the right way around. 3D mov- ies do the very same, physiologically speaking, they imitate what our eyes are doing. Actually, for 100 years films have cheated with lots of tricks and tried to overcome the fact that they didn't have the third dimension – with editing and all sorts of effects they made us believe that we perceive space. Of course there is perspective, and experience: we have all seen so many movies. We see them in our minds as if they could show us space, but of course they don't. So, in a strange way, I feel 3D is not only the future of film- making; it is also the missed past. We should have seen it from the beginning!
I heard some of my architect friends, like Jean Nouvel and Massimiliano Fuksas, say years ago that their work was like the work of a filmmaker. Do you think your movies contain some degree of an architect's work?
I feel a great affinity with architects. Our work does resemble each other's more that you might think. I have been to places with Jean before he started building; I was with him while he was building, and I was with him when it was finished, and it reminded me a lot of my own situation: before the film existed, when it was just in my head, when I was shooting, then in the editing room, and when it was finally finished. My work depends very, very much on a sense of place and an architect works primarily from that very sense. I once was in Sydney when the Museum of Modern Art had a photo show of mine. I was giving a lecture called "The Sense of Place" about how a filmmaker or photographer needs his sense of place to help put the place and the story together so they form a unison. There was Glenn Murcutt in the audience, an Australian architect who I admire very much, but had never met. He is a hero of mine, I know all his buildings. He introduced himself afterwards, and I was very much in awe. He said: "I just had to hear your speech because I gave a speech a couple years ago with the same title." I realized then that especially in the phase where you just dream of a building or a movie, our work is related. Some filmmakers work more from a sense of story or sense of character, which also applies to some architects. In my case, I definitely work from a sense of place. The story evolves into the place, can only happen there and nowhere else. Other filmmakers go the other way around. There are architects who can only function and work within their own place, like Glenn Murcutt. When I asked why he never made a building in Europe, he said: "How could I? I don't know the climate, I don't know the seasons, I don't know the birds, the trees. How could I build there? Give me 10 years to live in Ireland and I will build you a house there." I would exaggerate if I said the same but I need to spend time in a place before I can shoot there and I need to like the place. If I don't like the place, I don't know where to put my camera.
How did you find Paris, Texas?
Paris, Texas does not appear in the film, only a little photograph of it. The title is almost more of a metaphor than referring a real place. But of course I have been to the real city by the Red River, long before I made the movie. The name was just too good to be true. It tells such an amazing story (or haiku) in these two words. Both have five letters, and then you combine them, and all of a sudden you have an antithesis, an oxymoron, two opposites linked into one notion, a huge conflict, a mess or a joke; for most people it is a joke right away. And I lost a bet on it: I had a bet with Sam Shepard when we wrote the screenplay. I told Sam that I had been to Paris, Texas long ago, and in my memory there was an Eiffel Tower. And Sam said no, there is no Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas, but there is a Moulin Rouge. So we made the bet and when I drove there again later, with my photo camera, I realized that Sam had been right. Ten years later, when I went again in the mid '90s, there was an Eiffel Tower, and the Moulin Rouge was closed. Not a huge Eiffel Tower, of course, about as big as a Ferris wheel.
Where did you take this photograph of the Ferris wheel on the wall here?
In Armenia, at the border with Georgia. It's a Russian construction. There used to be many Russian workers there, but their city is empty now. The Russians have gone. I was there 3 years ago.
I thought that it should be in East Europe... What role does photography play for you? Is it just for preparing your movies?
It has become about half of my activity, a real effort, I mean. I have been taking photographs since I was a little boy, but I didn't take it seriously until I had my first exhibition in 1987. Since then I have taken a lot of journeys, like here in Armenia, only for the sake of photography: I didn't want to make a movie, just take pictures. It has become a part of my daily life. I spend a lot of time with printing and with exhibitions, too. (I have just come back from São Paulo where I spent two weeks.) Photography has slowly become the other part of my existence, because movies have their own logistics and agenda, and they take longer and longer; every year it takes longer, not just for me but for everybody. So, if I were to only make movies, I would sit around with an enormous amount of time on my hands. Luckily, I have got other jobs: I teach two days a week, I work for the European Film Academy, etcetera. I still make a film every two or three years. So what can a workaholic do with the rest of his time? Photography is ideal because I don't need or want any help. I have no assistants. I take my camera and my films, that's it. Bizarrely enough, I still use negatives, while most of my movies are made with digital equipment. I don't have a tripod; I shoot from my hand even with the big panoramic cameras. It's big, okay, but I can still carry it on my own. I travel alone, I shlep my own equipment and that's fantastic.
And maybe some ideas for your films come to you... That reminds me of Glenn Murcutt. When I got to know him a bit, he invited me to his house. I saw his office. There was nobody, so I said: "Where are your people?" He answered: "I don't have any! I do everything on my own." When he does bigger projects, he does it with a second architect so there are two of them. When he is building, of course, he has to employ people, but he doesn't have an office. I love my photography work because I can do it on my own. Most architects have armies of people working for them. I know Jean's office, is an entire building with dozens and dozens of people. I think every architect still has the dream of being able to sit down again and make a drawing all by themselves.
You have always been very attentive to the sound and music in your films. In my opinion, the choice of musicians who appear in your movies make your work even more interesting. Why do you give so much space to pop musicians and rock bands? No one else has done it so well.
That's not quite true, I mean I didn't invent that way of working. The one movie that totally encouraged me to combine my interest in music with my film-making was Easy Rider. I was still at film school and doing my first shots when I saw Easy Rider. It was a milestone in my life because it showed me how well rock & roll and filmmaking went together. Songs have storytelling power and can become an integral part of the filmmaking process. Until then, I thought that music was just another ingredient. So that was the great revelation. I love rock & roll and blues. It was tough for me to have to decide whether to pursue music or film, when I was starting out. The day that I had to sell my saxophone in order to buy my first 16mm Bolex camera was a very hard day in my life, because I knew it was a life's decision: when I sold that saxophone I would never play one again.
So the music in your films is also a tribute to the music you left behind as an unborn Wenders musician?
It is a tribute to the thing I love most after filmmaking. Whatever I do, whether I am driving, prepar- ing a film, writing or editing, I spend more time with music than without. The only reason I'm not listening to music right now is because we are doing an interview. Filmmaking is the only profession I know where you can combine everything: Travel, music, reading, painting, literature and poetry are all combined in the filmmaking process, and of course architecture comes close to doing the same. Jean Nouvel works with images and his imagination and inspiration comes from music, too.
You have become good friends with musicians like Bono from U2, and others. Can you tell us about that?
I think the relationship works both ways. In a way, they lead the life I could have led, not as a rock & roll star, of course, but as a musician, making records and touring. I think for many musicians, too, cinema is the other land that they could have gone to, and of course songwriters and singers do a lot of cinema-like things, only in miniature so to speak. With some musicians I have developed long friendships: Lou Reed, Bono, Nick Cave. Over the years we have worked together quite often, and I feel closer to them than to almost any of my filmmaking colleagues. I feel that our work is more related than my work is to other filmmakers. I feel I have more in common with Lou or Nick or Bono regarding what I try to do and what I try to say, than to most other filmmakers. There is so much more to movies than the end product! The whole vibe, the feeling out of which you make a movie is "contemporary life" and it comes from travelling and seeing a lot of things and listening to a lot of music and getting to know a lot of stories. Then you make this film that is only a tiny aspect of everything you have lived through. I guess with most musicians it is the same; what they can put into their songs is a little piece of things they go through. So I think movies are attractive to musicians and vice versa because we know so much about the other world. I mean, I have been with musicians in studios but I have never lived the life of a musician. I imagine it but I don't know it. I'm reading Keith Richards' biography now and it amazes me how parallel things are. I don't mean the amount of drugs and such – for heaven's sake, I'd be ten times dead! – but philosophically: what happened in the world and what lead to the Rolling Stones' albums is amazingly parallel to my craft and to some of my experiences and even my films. Of course, we are about the same age... The sources of inspiration, sometimes it just feel like 'Wow': almost a parallel universe to a certain kind of cinema that was also born in the late '60s, early '70s, together with British rock 'n roll.
Why do you think it has become so rare that direc- tors are also film authors?
When I started out, it was understood that you were both. It was unthinkable not to do everything. It was simply unthinkable not to produce because no producer would have produced me. I had to produce myself and I didn't know any writer so I had to write myself and in the beginning I also did my own camera work. I had to do it all by myself and the spirit of the work was so personal and it was so much a personal expression that I never would have thought of letting somebody else do it. Letting somebody else write my script for me, at least in the first ten years, was an absurd idea. Why would I let somebody else do it? It was my work! If I wanted to say something, why would I need a ghost-writer? The same with music: Why would I let anyone else pick the music for my movies? That is the most fun part of the whole process! Today, every movie has a music supervisor and he or she picks the music; that is unbelievable! I don't think directors have fun anymore. The fun is doing it all yourself, because, in the end, you are the only one responsible for it. However, now it has become the rule that the work is split up. The writer is the writer. The director is the director, the producer is the producer and then there is the composer and the music supervisor and the editor... I'm not saying that can't produce great movies. But, as a result, most films are not such a personal expression any more.
About the next question, let me say that I think all your films are pieces of art.
I won't interfere with your belief! But I've never called myself an artist...
Many artists in the last 20 years have been working with video and film, and some of them have started to make actual movies, the worst case is Julian Schnabel, the best is Shirin Neshat. What do you think about this phenomenon?
The phenomenon started much earlier. When I wanted to be a painter, in the late '60s, I realised that the painters whom I much admired, American painters such as Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol and Michael Snow, all of them made movies. I thought 'Wow', what a great way to continue painting in a different way – with film cameras. So I am myself part of that phenomenon. And I do think that Julian has made a couple of great movies!
Are your films autobiographic? How much of you is in your movies?
Much of me is revealed in my films, although not in the form of an autobiography. I have put so much of my own experiences into them that if I wrote an autobiography now, it would feel as if I were plundering my own movies. Philip Winter, who shows up in a lot of films of mine, is an alter ego of sorts. He knows a lot about me... My films are very personal, but not private, and this is why perhaps I don't like biographies, because inevitably they have to cross the border from personal to private. I am not interested in the private. I draw on experiences, what I have seen and lived through, my own life as well as my friends'. Biographies inevitably go into that area of the private. I hate that ever-increasing culture of invading privacy. You can put ten magazines like People in front of me on a desert island, and I will not open them. I am not interested. I would rather watch the waves for ten hours than read one of those magazines.
Do you work with your wife?
Yes, all the time. We are both photographers; my wife is only a photographer, unlike me. She used to be a camera woman, now she is only doing photographs. We actually travel together and she is the only travel companion I can cope with; for instance, we were in Armenia for two weeks. Or in Japan where we went on a photo assignment. We have breakfast together in the morning, and then she goes one way and I go the other way. We meet in the evening and we tell each other what we have done. My wife still works with film but she has started to also work with digital. I only use film negative. After a while we come home, we develop our films, I have my contact sheets and she has hers and then I see for the first time what she has done and seen over there, and she looks at my stuff and sees for the first time what I have done and seen in the same place where she was. She does not remember the Ferris wheel, but she made amazing pictures of the workers in the fields 10 miles away and I didn't see them, of course. I was attracted by the Ferris wheel and it took me quite long time until all the people were gone and had left the shot. Donata is only interested in people and her photography is about people and their souls. Portraits, but also people working and being involved in what they like; she is showing almost the reverse angle of my pictures. She only works in black & white and I work in col- our. When I work in a place I am not so interested in the people. They remain in the background. We are not in each other's way; actually we comple- ment each other beautifully. I know it is a dream to be able to live as husband and wife and actually work together and even work back to back.
Do you have a good relationship with Italy and is there anything special about it?
I have been more attracted to Italy in the past ten years than before. I have now made a number of films there, too. I have discovered that German longing for the South and for Italy in general. It is something that I have discovered at a relatively late age, but then again Goethe was also quite old when he travelled there – I was happy to realise that he wasn't a young man! When I was younger, in my twenties and thirties, I always wanted to go west, to America, to Australia, so Italy was too close. It is only now that I have come back to Europe and that I have accepted that I am here and have lost much of that longing for America: I recognise the richness and beauty of Europe. I feel a particular attrac- tion to Italy and I feel how much it is a complementary thing with me being German. I have not been able to satisfy this feeling anywhere else but in Italy. Others enjoy Turkey or Greece and they go there all the time. I don't know, I have that with Italy; I feel that all I need to make up for the fact that I am German is there. I don't need much else. For a long time in my life, I thought that America had what I needed to complement the missing pieces of my soul. I am happy that I have discovered Italy because it tastes better and it is closer. But my affinity with Italy is not without pain, lately. These days you cannot go to Italy and not feel extremely embarrassed. Well, this will pass; it's all going to be part of history and we will all remember how we survived that age, or better, we all ask ourselves how we could possibly have accepted that it could last so long. It is going to pass, and become a footnote in history and we will laugh about it like the Reagan era. I was suffering so much then that I left America; I couldn't take it anymore and I left again when George Bush came around, because I was furious. Now we just laugh at it and remember those years with a slight embarrassment. I mean, I'm not yet able to fully laugh about Bush, he did too much damage, but it is history... The same goes for Italy.
We must end the interview now, with a last question: did you ever ask yourself why, as a German, you have become one of the most important movie directors in the world? How did it happen?
Just timing. I was lucky. Look: there is no better condition for anybody creative – no matter where he lives or when – then a tabula rasa where you can start from scratch. Today there are almost no artists, musicians or filmmakers starting from scratch; there are traditions everywhere, in cinema, music, art, architecture. Whatever field of music you are in, it is at least 20 years old, like independent rock. There are 80 years of blues, 50 years of rock and roll, and so on. But for me as a film maker and creative young man growing up in Germany in the '50s and 60s, there was nothing. Nothing at all. When I started as a filmmaker, there was no cinema out there. Germany was literally a cinematic "no-man's land"; you could just start anew, without making references to anyone or anything. Let me make an exception from what I said before: I am reading the autobiography of Keith Richards. Those guys start- ed from scratch, too: they took the American tradition of country blues and played electric guitars as nobody had done before. There were no rules, they invented them by themselves. I think this is the most beautiful condition! I wanted to become a painter, then I stumbled upon cinema at a time when cinema in Germany was a blank page. So my desire to be a musician and a painter led to me not becoming either. I discovered the blank field of cinema instead where no rule existed: it was sheer luck and timing! I wanted to be something else and found an empty place on the landscape, on the map, where nobody had been. I put my foot on it...