The following is a transcript of a conversation between Wim Wenders and Deborah Attoinese of Overall Productions in preparation for a documentary.

It's somewhat of a rough cut, but nevertheless worth reading. Wim touches upon his philosophies on filmmaking, the dangers of acting and the directors responsibilities for the actor. Also discussed are the duality of the real and spiritual world, his motivations for making 'Wings of Desire', and the fact that he never intended to be a filmmaker.

 

"The term art movie, I don't know if I can relate to it - I'd rather go see a movie - than an art movie."

"I always assume that with each thing you do creatively and especially with each movie you pass on a certain notion of the entire world.
No matter what movie it is, it can be a horror movle, or a war movie or a documentary - any piece of work sort of projects a certain image of the world that you invite your audience to take part in. And if you want it to or not - you project - with each thing - your entire vision of the world, even if it's just that little piece of it. I think you pass on your entire vision and if your vision is purely materialistic and you think of it in terms of that it's this fight about violence and victory or whatever then this will show in any film that you do. Even if you try to make a poetic film. If you really believe in the world being a materialistic system then any film you make will show that. I assume that any film that I make will show my inner most vision of the world - I can't even help It. For me the world is a place combined of the visible and invisible. And it is a world that definitely has materialistic edges - especially if you live in Hollywood, you can't escape them, you're in the Lion's Den so to speak. But on the other hand whenever I open my eyes and whenever I think a thought or whenever I make one step in front of the other I'm also aware that there is a whole different side to the world which is you might say is invisible - and you might call it the spiritual realm that I try to represent in my films. Not separated from the materialistic world, they're inseparable, like body and soul. That's the secret of man kind - that we carry both. And that we have to deal with both of them. So my inner most desire probably with every film is to make that strange amalgam that we are, body and soul express themselves or show the world filmalogically, but make people understand that I think there is something behind and that there is other meaning and there is other values in what you see. What you see in my films is not what you get."

"As soon as you look at the world as the creation of a certain unknown entity, I mean I don't know God anymore than anyone else but I believe he's out there and so as soon as you accept the world as a creation that defines your part as a director already very differently because all of a sudden you don't assume that part of the creator automatically and my filmmaking is certainly not of the kind where I think I just put it all together and I just create the story and the sets and it's all my own doing. I'm rather a filmmaker who expects that I'm being given a lot and that I receive a lot of presents from the world, from reality, from my actors, from the weather, from the light - also from our own imaginations wherever that is coming from - sometimes I'm not so sure, sometimes I look at my old films and I very often think, where did that come from? I could never do that again because I am sure that would never cross my mind anymore."

"Your own imagination - sometimes you have to consider it as a present or as a gift or as something you can not put your finger on and say hey - that's my credit, I've done this because you don't know where it comes from. Especially if you work with actors in a very intimate and loving way - sometimes you get things out of them that you have no right in the world to expect to get from anybody. I've worked with people who have given me their entire lives In a few weeks or in a couple of months or sometimes im just one day, And you have no right to expect that they would do that and you have no right to say hey this is our contract - you're the actor, I'm the director now please give it to me. I mean you can expect to give them their craft but you can't expect them to give you their soul and sometimes they do and sometimes you get the same from the places and sometimes I'm making a movie in a place because I feel attracted to that place and I feel that the place wants to tell me something and then I'm there and we're shooting and I get so much I don't even know where to put it anymore and I realize the place actually called me and the place - and you can call it whatever you want - I don't think places have souls but somehow God's creation came into the film with a full story and a full agenda and it all translates Into the images I'm producing and they're not really mine, I mean I help put them together and as a director you are very much of an organzier anyway. Your like the go in beween, the go between and sometimes I rather feel that I'm more of a travel agent than anything else. More of a lawyer, travel agent, bookkeeper than artist. But every now and then you put something together and you look at it after and soon you say - wow - how blessed can you be that you were able to catch that with your camera."

"Filmmaking is a risky business and you invite people onto a journey that can be risky and treacherous and dangerous, especially actors.
Acting is a high risk profession because you go out and enter into character and enter into almost a different state of mind than your own and you become a certain person and you adopt a biography all by using your own material and your own life. Sometimes I think actors are the real stunt men and women in the film and the stunt persons do the easy jobs. Actors really open themselves up in dangerous ways I must say and sometimes it's so difficult for an actor to return and come back out of a character after a day of shooting where you've really entered a different persona and to come back home and function. So as a director you have a great responsibilty if you sort of call certain emotions or if you ask for them because most actors are left alone as soon as they've delivered and it's up to them to deal with these emotions and that's why drugs and drinking problems happen so often in the profession. Because people go home and they have to resolve the turmoil that the movie and the director have caused. So you have to be very careful. But it is my strong conviction that nothing that you do is worth it in any profession if it's not done with caring or with love and if I look at my own work - anything that I've done withour conviction and therefore without a certain love invested is just not worth it. And if you can convey that conviction to your actors you've already helped your actors in there risks because already you give them a certain chance that you're going to be there and that they'll be carried when you call cut. That it's not over. So I try to feel responsible for my actors after the day of shooting is over. Actually sometimes it's even more important what you do with them apart from the set."

"Whenever you do that thing of storytelling you create context and meaning. Whatever you do. Even if it's a pretty meaningless story - but as a structure in such it creates meaning and meaning creates security. And I think that's what it's all about in filmmaking and storytelling - that you try to make sense in some way or another."

"Truth is never in the film and never in the story
- the truth is in what the beholder or spector, the audience leaves the movie with. That's the only truth that counts in my book - it's only what people take away and not whats on the screen."

"I never wanted to be a filmmaker - that's the beauty of it.
I wanted to be a painter. Even after my fourth film I though how lucky can you get. Eventually you're probably going to have to go back to writing or painting because It never crossed my mind that I could do this for ten, twenty, thirty years - It seemed to good to be true. I still sometimes can't believe it - that I can continue doing this."

"One of the biggest surprises for me probably was in the early eightes. I had lived In America for seven years and I decided to go back to Germany.
I was walking around Berlin where I hadn't been for seven, eight years- and I decided to make a movie there. It was more like an effort to try and come to terms with this country again and my own country so to speak, the German language. My life had happened in English for eight years - So I was In Berlin and I was thinking how to tell the story of this city and this country. Or somehow - how to dive into the country, It's past and into my own and sort of bring it all back together or understand it from scratch - and the thing that happened to me one day when I wrote into my notebook - guardian angels question mark? As possible heroes of a story? As possible characters- as a way to transend the city - or meet all sorts of people. I don't know, meet myself, my childhood. And it was utterly unlike me. Because I didn't have a big thing with angels. I mean as a kid of course being Catholic and stuff but I had rejected that so thoroughly - so to make a movie with angels seemed like the least possible thing - it seemed completely out of of the question when I had written it and for days I stared at it and I couldn't even believe that I had put it down. And it stuck. And I ended up making this movie and even in the course of the movie I kept thinking how can you possible have gone for it? And at the end of it, I must say, and ever since, I can only say like I had called on them so to speak, without ever intending to. I feel I didn't even do it. I didn't even write that guardian angels question mark In my book. the end, I realized I couldn't have done it without them. And they must have been mighty present and real in order to have me survie the film and become so real in it after all, I think that is the most surprising thing that ever happened to me. That at the end of this film I was on very good terms with them."

Thank you,