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Australian International Documentary Conference 2003 Wenders flies in on wings of change German director Wim Wenders, in Australia and heading to Melbourne this weekend (Feb 10-13) is keeping close tabs on shifts in attitude to war and entertainment. Ruth Hessey reports. Every country has its share of egomaniacs. Just look for the filmmakers if you can't find enough politicians to fit the bill. Wim Wenders, however, is not one of them. Although he's inspired his fair share of adulation, and survived a degree of global celebrity granted to few film directors, Wenders walks tall but treads softly, sporting the long hair and thick glasses of a rock'n'roll intellectual who prefers hanging out with musicians to smooching in Hollywood. He insists he is not an intellectual, but with 20 feature films, eight documentaries, 10 short films, six exhibitions of paintings, photographs and digital art, and six published photo-journals behind him, Wenders' multi-dimensional success as an artist certainly inspired the recent Australian International Documentary Conference held in Byron Bay from Feb 10-13. It was an ego-fest remarkable for the political rants of David Bradbury, the unrepentant auteurism of Dennis O'Rourke, and a swag of networking film bureaucrats and filmmakers trying to join dots against a depressing backdrop of funding cuts and tighter belts for Australia's independent filmmakers. Wenders' insights into the creative process, the global crisis, and how filmmakers can expect to respond to the digital revolution were balm for sore ears battered by gripes about money and anxious talk of war. ``A period of history has ended," Wenders said at Byron Bay the day before his talk. ``The late age of consumerism as we all lived it in the 1990s is over." Before a couple of hundred filmmakers the next day, Wenders went further, saying filmmakers had a responsibility to make films about peace, which, if you think about it, are few and far between. Before war loomed and millions around the world marched for peace on February 16, such comments might have drawn scorn. Wenders, however, is working on a compilation with other filmmakers, actors and musicians called An Epic In Praise Of Peace, and detects a global sea change. ``Content was sadly out of fashion in the '90s," he said.``Films were all about excitement. But I see an incredible hunger in young people today, not just for whirlwinds for the eyes." Wenders and his wife, the stills photographer Donata Wenders, visited Byron Bay together. Before Wenders leaves Australia, he will lecture at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. He will also host Popcorn Taxi sessions in Sydney and Melbourne and attend awards for the Australian Screen Directors Association. He has come with a message, at the very time people want to hear it. Wenders came of age during the great surge of creative recovery and inquiry in which Europe was reborn from the rubble of another war. He was born in 1945, in Dusseldorf, a city levelled by World War II. He witnessed the rise of rock music, punk and MTV. Very early in his career, he displayed a talent for grasping the essentials of the bigger picture and analysing their impact - from the influence of American culture, to the fallout of the technological revolution which transformed the West in the 20th century. For all his deep thinking and the haunting melancholia that infuses his films, Wenders is not, however, a gloomy man. While he sees the increasing gap between rich and poor as the core of the current global crisis, with characteristic determination, he also sees a way out. ``I can make a film with 100 trucks and 200 people behind me, or I can make a film just on my own, even cutting it at home. ``A film made with poor means can be rich in content. A young filmmaker now can make a film for $200,000 with a potential world audience." It's all part of the democratisation of the world's greatest art form at a time when the poor have a lot to say to the rich, and must find alternatives to suicide notes. Many other international filmmakers, such as Lars Von Trier and his Dogma followers in Scandinavia (no lights, no soundtrack, no glamour), and Steven Soderbergh with his last American film Full Frontal (no make-up, no trailers, no ``stars"), are in hot pursuit of the same truth. Wenders is far too modest to agree that he invented ``indie" cinema (although Paris,Texas, the first ``guerrilla" feature made by a director of his stature, won the Palm D'Or in Cannes and became a worldwide hit). He describes documentary film-making as ``a humbling step" in his development, and decries the association between the approaching war and the entertainment industry in the United States. ``These $100-million blockbusters are military machines, and they have prepared us for the war we are facing now." Wenders also sees a huge change in audiences. ``They can read so fast,all the complexity that took three or four viewings in the past," he says,and he also prophesies a digital revolution in exhibition and distribution which will liberate filmmakers and audiences from the multiplex chains. But he says he's definitely the wrong guy to ask for a recipe for success. His last film, The Million Dollar Hotel, made in America starring Mel Gibson, was, he says ruefully, a problem child. For every film touched by genius, Wenders has made another that stank without grace. ``The greatest story I've succeeded to tell," he says of Buena Vista Social Club. ``Ididn't even know I had it. I discovered it in the edit suite. And it wasbigger than anything I could have invented." He believes that all the formulas which so many schools now push, ``were created by people who want a guarantee they will make a profit. The big flops they make show the method is not fool proof. I can only say the opposite. I can't offer certainty." Of course, Wenders had the good fortune to come of age as a filmmaker during a period of extraordinary innovation. For many of his early films, hehad no more than a half page of notes, and not the inkling of a script to offer investors. Even he can't get away with that now. But he is willing to share his own dark nights of the soul. ``I've had to fight the secreative blocks and depressions, when you feel you've lost something, or you can't do it anymore. I've been scared witless, like in a nightmare. I've had a period of years where I did not even remotely live up to my potential. ``And the most difficult thing to do is to let go. There is a common misconception that a director is a god-like person. Ever since I gave up on fulfilling that image, I did my best work. ``Of all the most beautiful things I've been able to capture," he adds, ``I know I cannot take the credit." Wenders considers his success and failures have been gifts. ``Sometimes you see a movie which is totally forced, and the person who made that must be a megalomaniac," he says. ``When I started filming Wings Of Desire the characters as angels horrified me. How would they talk? How would they dress? I just let go, and I was helped in such a big way. It was miraculous." Wenders won Best Director at Cannes for the film in 1987. Other gifts have included the central desert of Australia, and his encounter with indigenous people during the making of Until The End Of The World. He says Australia ``completely changed my idea of place and land: it cannot be owned, or sold. It has a value that is higher than ourselves." His Sydney lecture will use many of the photographs he took in Australia, which have travelled with him to lectures at the Guggenheim, Bilbao and all over the world. His collaborations with musicians - from Ry Cooder to Bono - have brought him the greatest joy, and he believes that sound and image together communicates something greater than the sum of its parts. As for Hollywood, Wenders says he wasted six years there. Later, returning to America to make Paris, Texas on his own terms, he found the success that had eluded him. Now he's happy to live there, at least part of the year. ``Hollywood is the most anonymous place in the world because there are so many famous people, no one bothers with a German filmdirector," he says.
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