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'The art of the invisible'
By Uri Klein

"When I watch the early films such as 'Alice in the Cities' and 'Kings of the Road' - and I do so from time to time - I am moved by the simplicity that characterized them," says German director Wim Wenders, currently visiting Israel. "But I know that I will never be able to be as simple as I was then. I've lost that ability. I remember how simple it once was for me to tell a story, and I can't do that any longer. My desire to make movies was once simple too, and now it isn't. To be simple is the most difficult thing in the world, and there's nothing more difficult today than to convey and express simplicity, because the world has become so complicated."

And in fact, there's no question that Wenders' latest feature film, "Palermo Shooting," cannot be described as simple - as its plot is not only made up of a large number of elements, it also continuously shifts between reality and hallucination. (The film was not commercially distributed in Israel, but was screened last week at the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem Cinematheques in honor of Wenders' visit as a guest of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School, now celebrating its 20th anniversary.)
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"Palermo Shooting" is the story of a photographer named Finn (played by Campino, the soloist of the German band Die Toten Hosen, making his film acting debut), who encounters a professional and existential crisis. He is haunted by the feeling that his death is approaching; among other things, he meets a mysterious and threatening figure in a bar, played by the singer Lou Reed. Finn decides to go to Palermo, Sicily, where a "Festival of Death" is held.

There he meets Flavia (played by Giovanna Mezzogiorno), who restores art; he eludes attempts made on his life; and meets Death personified, played by actor Dennis Hopper in a black robe.

Simple it is not, and the reaction to the movie - which was first screened last year at a Cannes Festival competition - was not simple either. Wenders has yet to recover from the sweeping criticism of the film, and with a kind of combination of sadness and bitterness he notes that the film itself has not overcome the blow it sustained in the wake of the Cannes screening.

While "Palermo Shooting" may be a very problematic film, at the same time it is also a very personal one. Among other things, it is the first one Wenders has filmed in Europe in about 15 years, and is the first to include a scene, in fact the opening one, filmed in Dusseldorf - where Wenders was born in 1945.

"I never thought that I would spend time in the United States and would work there for such a long period," says Wenders, explaining why he decided to return to Europe to film. "It happened because all kinds of projects in which I was involved took longer than I had anticipated. Now I felt a need to return to Europe, including Germany, where I was born and where I directed my first films.

"In recent years I felt uncomfortable in America," he continues. "I live in Los Angeles, which is a city that thinks it's in the center of the world, but the truth is that it's on the margins. It's provincial. It thinks that it's connected to the world, but that's not the case."

Wenders studied medicine and philosophy in Freiburg and Dusseldorf, but dropped out of school and moved to Paris to become an artist. During that period, the mid-1960s, he began to take an interest in film and spent hours on end at the Parisian cinematheque. When he was not accepted to the Institute for Advanced Cinematographic Studies (now La Femis), the highly regarded Parisian school of film, he returned to Germany and studied at a university for film and television in Munich. During those years he also worked as a film critic for the newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung and for the weekly Der Spiegel.

In 1970 Wenders directed his first full-length feature, "Summer in the City." The tension between European and American cinema is evident throughout his work, and even more than that, the tension between all of American popular culture - mainly its cinema and music, which influenced him - and European culture. In "Kings of the Road," his 1976 masterpiece, one of the characters declares "The Yanks have colonized our subconscious." This became one of the most famous lines in cinema during that time, when the tension between European and American cinema was evident not only in Wenders' work, but in that of the directors who emerged from the French New Wave and others.

Wenders is aware that this tension exists in his work, and says that the difference between cinema on both sides of the ocean is only widening. "It's as though cinematic production in America and in Europe have become two different professions that represent two entirely different ways of observing the world and relating to cinema. There was a short period when it seemed that independent American cinema would be an alternative to the mainstream, but that period is over. In America they no longer understand cinema that springs from specific local sources; they understand only cinema that is general, that tries to please everyone, and the Americans are even angry if anyone tries to do something different. And I'm increasingly trying to take a different path; I'm increasingly attracted to documentary cinema, to cinema that has cultural roots and the color of the place where it is created. Cinema today is split into two camps, and there seems to be nothing to bridge between them any longer.

"This may be something of a generalization," he continues, "but the great European cinema directors have always believed that cinema expresses life experience, that films erupt from the soul of their creators and reveal it. In America cinema has always served as a facade behind which the artist hides without revealing anything about himself. I think that is also true of the great American artists, such as John Ford or David Lynch, except in his film 'The Straight Story.' In their films they reveal nothing of themselves. There are exceptions of course. For example Nicholas Ray [Wenders and Ray documented the last months of his life in the 1980 film 'Lightning Over Water']. For most American directors, the language of cinema is designed for connecting to life, for telling stories, but not for revealing themselves. Even Woody Allen doesn't reveal himself. He invented a character and hides behind it."

Is it possible too that America simultaneously attracts and deters you?

"That's the story of my life."

When one surveys his body of work, Wenders' attitude toward cinema seems to have changed since the beginning of his film career, mainly in respect to realism. His early movies were realistic in essence; in many of his later films - from "Wings of Desire" to "The Million Dollar Hotel," and now "Palermo Shooting" - there's a dimension of fantasy, of hallucination.

"When I began to make films," says Wenders, "I believed that cinema is the art of the visible. Over the years I have become increasingly convinced that cinema is the art of the invisible; that it has a unique and even uncanny ability to go beyond what is evident. Thirty years ago I wouldn't have believed that one day I would say those words."

You began making films during one of the last great moments of what is commonly dubbed "artistic European cinema." Do you believe any of this still exists?

"No, it's on the way out. But other things are coming into being in its place, which I hope are global phenomena. I'm referring to the cinema being created in Asia, in Latin America. Of course it's cinema that takes different paths, that deals with different subjects, and filmmakers today have different tools from what I had when I started to direct, but they enable personal expression that is just as strong as what was characteristic of European cinema in the past.

"But artistic European cinema has no future," he says. "Had I directed 'Wings of Desire' now, the film might have been screened but with very limited distribution. Maybe several people would have noticed it, but it wouldn't have become a classic. Had 'Waltz With Bashir' been screened 10 or 20 years ago, it would have become a major cinematic event - it's the greatest cinematic confession that I've seen in recent years; that didn't happen, and in spite of the admiration for the film, it remained a minor event in the world."

And what about German cinema, to which you, like directors Alexander Kluge, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog and others, brought a new message? Does anything remain of the legacy of what is now called the "new German cinema"?

"No. German cinema today works in formats that differ from those in which I and my generation worked. 'The Lives of Others,' the most successful German film worldwide in recent years, is not a film that works in the tradition that we tried to shape. This is a film that was skillfully made, but was designed in a manner that would please everyone. Everyone I know from what used to be East Germany hated that film with a passion, because it's completely false. They felt that the film was betraying them."

Wenders' films have been greatly admired since his cinematic career began, admiration that only increased after he directed "Paris, Texas" - which won the Palme d'Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival - and "Wings of Desire" in 1987.

Is such an artist always expected to direct his next masterpiece, and when he doesn't do so must he receive a belligerent, even violent reaction, as though he has disappointed his fans?

Wenders hesitates for a long time before answering this question. "Yes," he finally answers. "After 'Paris, Texas' they said in Hollywood: 'Here, the film is proof that the guy knows how to tell a linear story,' and they expected me to continue working that way, and I didn't deliver the goods. The worst thing that can happen to artists is if they begin to do what is expected of them, if they stop trying new things, if they stop taking chances; then they turn into their own imitators. You always have to examine new ways of expressing things. Now, for example, I'm directing a film about Pina Bausch, and it's presenting me with two new challenges: how to film dance in the cinema - and I've never made a musical film; and I'm also filming three-dimensionally and I've never done such a thing."

I have a feeling that the last time you were in Israel, in 2000, as a guest of the Jerusalem Film Festival with your film "The Million Dollar Hotel," and we spoke at the time, you were more optimistic about the future of cinema.

"I'm not pessimistic. But I think that the traditional process of filmmaking, and the traditional way in which cinema represented the world in which we live, are gradually disintegrating. I'm waiting to see what will be created in their stead."

After directing films in Europe and in the United States, where you live, how do you define yourself in terms of nationality?

"A European director with a German past."
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