Wim Wenders - The Official Site

Dear Tadao-San,

It is a few years ago now since I had the intense pleasure to visit you in your office in Osaka, and since I had the privilege of a 'guided tour' through your buildings in the area, some of which were just in the process of being finished.

I have seen more of your work ever since, in Europe and in America. Our encounter has led me to always see your face and your physical presence as well as your character show up behind these buildings. I stand there and recognize you, in the very shape of a concrete wall, in the darkness an entrance area, in the way glass and water play with each other, in the way light comes through slits and openings. I look at it and say to myself: "Yes, this is Tadao!' in the same way that I would see an unknown film of a master that I admire, or read a new book of a writer friend, or buy a new CD of my Rock'n Roll or Blues heroes.

So even if we have only met briefly ever since, in strange places, surprised to see each other, I feel like you accompany my life ever since, and that my sense of what is 'contemporary", not only in architecture, has been continually shaped by you. Each time I see a new work, you redefine "modernity' for me and you reconfirm your strong sense of place, your respect for nature, the modesty of your means coupled at the same time with a daring and courageous statement of greatness.

Sometimes I can't help thinking that our professions have something in common, and I would love to know your response to this: When you come to a place where you have never been before, and you start planning and then constructing something there, far away from your home or your office, in a new environment, a different culture, surrounded by a different way of living amd of thinking, that must be similar to be making movies in places that I've just been discovering, like I did in Havana, or Lisbon, or Australia, or Tokyo. Myself, I then sometimes think: 'I have no right to be here and film. I'm a stranger herel' But the next moment I also think: "That's exactly why I should continue! Being a stranger is sort of a state of grace. It allows you to see what the people who live here cannot see anymore, because it is too familiar for them...' Do you recognize these feelings? Do you have similar experiences?

I hope our paths cross soon again in the near future, so I can renew my memory of that smile I remember on your face, and of those clear, piercing eyes which I interpreted as the look of an adventurer, or a sportsman, rather than an "intellectual", which is the common misunderstanding of an architect, or a filmmaker.

Dear Wim Wenders,

Thank you for your heartfelt letter. It was fall of 1993 when I showed you around my architecture. Since then we've run into one another from time to time, most recently, last year in Paris. I hope you're well.

Some of the work of mine that I'd been telling you about then is completed, and I'd be grateful for the opportunity to once again show you around it.

I haven't had a chance to see your latest film 'The Million Dollar Hotel" yet, but I want to tell you how wondrous, among all your works, 'The Buena Vista Social Club" is. Never before in a work of media have I been so fascinated by the visceral depiction of the human form in action. I heard that you spent a year living with Cuban musicians in order to make this film. I can only imagine that in light of the sensitivity you express in your films and your friendly and generous nature, you formed relationships that allowed them to open themselves to you unhesitatingly. The face of the old man who says with confidence that it is the best time in his life, even though he is at the last stage of his life, impressed me so much.

I've always sought the truth beyond the wall, and the humanity beyond that. I wonder if that has some resemblance to your quest through the lens of your camera.

In your letter, you asked me about encountering a different culture. Working in foreign locations has always been trying and fraught with anxiety for me as well, because I know that the architecture I make will indubitably exist as an object foreign to that place. But I also believe that creation emerges not from harmony but from the stimulation caused by the clash of foreignness, imposing itself and creating dissonance. And those encounters with new worlds become a source of power in people's lives.

The urge to create and the anticipation of those encounters. They're the reasons I continue, despite the travails, to work abroad. And they are also the reasons I am eager to work with you at some point.