The Cinema of Wim Wenders: Images Narrative and the Postmodern Condition

Abstract

Cinema of Wim is a unique anthology of source materials and selected essays on the films of Wim a major filmmaker in the so-called New German Cinema movement. Although arguably the leading European filmmaker of the last two decades, Wenders has not received as much attention by scholars in the United States or in Europe as some of his colleagues who also had their beginnings in New German Cinema, like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Margarethe von Trotta. Cinema of Wim Wenders, the first anthology of scholarly work on serves as an introduction to the central concerns of his cinema while situating his work within German film history and the contemporary debates about postmodern film and media theory. The first section of the book features essays by Wenders that chronicle important shifts and continuities in his work over the last 15 years. The voice-over to his short Reverse Angle, a diary film made in New York for French television, is published here for the first time. These essays are complemented by excerpts from interviews that offer Wenders' own informal and personal perspectives on the central television that inform his films and writings, concluding with an interview conducted in 1994 by Gerd Gemunden, one of the anthology's editors, in which Wenders responds to the disappointing reception of Faraway, So Close!. His work, probably more than that of any other European director, reflects the tension between the European auteur tradition and the increasing dominance of the American media industry. In both his filmmaking and his critical writing, he explores how the relationship between image and narrative manifests the basic opposition between these two film traditions. The second part of the book consists of contributions by ten American and European scholars exploring aspects of Wenders' work and his films, including Paris, Texas, Faraway, So Close! and Wings of Desire, among others. Differing significantly in methodology and scope, the essays all trace and theorise the twists and turns Wenders' work has taken amidst concurrent changes in contemporary European and American history, film history, cultural production, media technology and aesthetics. A filmography and bibliograhy on Wenders complete this comprehensive collection.