THESSALONIKI - A TRAVEL REPORT by Donata Wenders

In November Wim and I went to Greece for the 47th International Thessaloniki Filmfestival. The view from our hotel window made clear what this week was all about in the whole city.

Running parallel to the Film Festival we had a photo exhibition showing our movie- and backstage photographs of the last 12 years. It was like a journey through the years that lay behind us. Pretty impressive....

Wim gave a masterclass, with his beloved friend, the director Walter Salles, about the subject of road movies. They shared their experience about shooting road movies, showed examples of exemplary moments and spoke about the challenges and the beauty of being open to the present moment and
embracing what is given to you along the way.

Wim got a lifetime achievement award, which Theo Angelopoulos gave to him. A touching moment!

Following was a question and answer sessions focusing on all the movies that were playing in the Wim Wenders Retrospective at the festival. So you can imagine how busy he was next to all the talk's, dinners and interview's.

Our hotel was close to the sea. A calming situation, if you just looked. But we could not hear the calming ocean that we saw! An orchestra of all kinds of motor sounds blasted and "busy-buzzed" into the serene scene from the street along the sea, drowning out everything else....we tried to imagine the sound of the ocean.

Wim took pictures while being concious of keeping enough film for Mount Athos! where he was planning to go for a day and a night. Since he was 10 years old he wanted to go there! And now he had a visa &
permission! He was excited! For those who do not know, Mount Athos is a small part of Greece, that is its own country within Greece. Only orthodox Monch's live there and no woman has been allowed to go, for more than a thousand years, not even female animals live there! Except birds of course! :-)




I was planning to go to the east into the "Pomako Horias", the Villages of the Pomaki. They are greek people, who were forced by the turks to bekome moslems, some centuries ago. You can imagine, we found a lot of misty weather, as it was november and some moments reminded us of Theo Angeolopolous' movies.

The day Wim & I departed for Mount Athos and Xanthy, it was pouring rain. We got up real early to have some time at our destinations.......

.... I was wondering how he was doing on Mount Athos and in the evening and the next morning I got text messages like: "Incredible! had to taste all the wine with one of the monks, listened to the film script of another monk for hours, looked at 20 years of photography of a third monk! tomorrow morning at 4 am is mass! oof!" The next morning I found a textmessage from Wim: " it is 6am, behind us are 2 hours of churchservice." then: " breakfast: 1 cup of tea, 2 dry pieces of bread, 5 olives." I knew, he enjoyed his time with the monks thoroughly!

.....And before we knew it, we had to return to the festival. The Goethe Institute was waiting for us to join them in an open conversation and we had to see some movies we had promised to watch.
  

The next day was the final day. We saw movies, people and then there was the final ceremony and party. Wim and I were pretty tired, but all the impressions we have on b/w as well as on color-film, we will see in some days, when everything is developed.
 

Lots of love to you, as well from Wim,
Donata.