UPDATED: German film master Wim Wenders was greeted like a rock star in Lyon, France, where he received an honorary tribute on Friday evening (Oct. 21) at the Lumiere Festival, a week-long celebration of classic cinema headed by Cannes festival boss Thierry Fremaux.
“I’ve received prizes in my life but this time it’s different, it’s the the prize of cinema!” said Wenders after stepping on stage to the beat of Texas’ “I Don’t Want a Lover.” Glancing at Fremaux who was standing nearby, Wenders added, with a cheeky smile, “I don’t want to say that a Palme d’Or is nothing. But the Lumiere Prize is unique and I’m proud of it!” Wenders, who won the Palme d’Or with “Paris, Texas,” is considered a Cannes regular. He’s presented his most iconic films there, including “WingsofDesire” which won best director. This year, he was back on the Croisette with a pair of films, “Perfect Days” in competition and “Anselm” in Special Screenings.
Wenders was feted at the Lumiere Festival with a massive standing ovation inside the Hall Tony Garnier which housed 5,000 guests, including Cannes president Iris Knobloch, Vincent Lindon, Alfonso Cuaron, Aurore Clément, the French actress of “Paris, Texas,” Costa Garvas, Claude Lelouch, Jean-Jaques Annaud, Lyna Khoudri, Michel Hazanavicius, Marisa Paredes, “Anatomy of a Fall” producers David Thion and Marie-Ange Lucciani, producers Caroline Benjo and Carole Scotta, as well as Films du Losange boss Charles Gillibert, MK2 co-CEO Nathanael Karmitz and France Televisions’ Manual Alduy, among others. Cuaron and Lindon were some of the guests who paid a special tribute to Wenders on stage.
Wenders also paid homage to the Lumiere brothers, who were natives of Lyon, saying that “It’s incredible, inconceivable, unimaginable that the inventors of cinema were called ‘Lumière’[light in French] because this word is “the very essence of cinema.”
Wenders went on to thank his partners over the years, including his co-writer, Nobel Literature Prize winner Peter Handke, and his iconic actor, Rüdiger Vogler, who both attended the ceremony, and stood on stage with him, alongside Lelouch and Annaud.
Previous Lumiere honorees include Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino, Pedro Almodóvar, Martin Scorsese, Wong Kar-wai, Francis Ford Coppola, Jane Campion and Tim Burton.
Earlier that day, Wim Wenders gave a masterclass where he admitted “feeling like a dinosaur” when asked if he felt like a “survivor of cinema.”
Expanding on his answer, Wenders said he had been lucky enough to experience great changes in cinema throughout his lifetime and that he felt more like he had experienced rather than survived cinema –“vécu plutôt que survécu,” as he said in his fluent French.
Looking back on his 1984 cult movie “Paris, Texas,” for which he won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, the German director explained it had been the culmination of one of his greatest lessons in life.
“I realized I would never be American, and that I would never make American films. In my heart and soul, I was a German romantic and my profession was as a European filmmaker. To prove it, I made “Paris, Texas” with my own rules, my own production, a small budget, and the best people in the world: Robby Müller, Sam Shepard and Ry Cooder. And this film allowed me to return to Europe with my head held high.”
On his beginnings as a young filmmaker as part of the New German Cinema with the likes of Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wenders said that part of its success was down to the solidarity that existed among them.
“We were not afraid of each other, because we had nothing in common. In my case, [my specialty] was classic American cinema, and we were all dependent on each other’s success. The Filmverlag derAutoren[the filmdistributor set up in 1971 to help finance and distribute independentfilms by German authors]was made up of 15 of us, each film was endorsed by the 14 others, none of us could have made a film by himself,” said Wenders.
Questioned on his role as a “the passer on of memory,” Wenders, whose body of work includes an extensive collection of photographs and paintings, said: “We are relatively familiar with our own dreams, and how they translate in film and photos, but that representation is relatively limited. I am always interested in understanding how artists like Vermeer and Hopper find their language.”
As an example, he cited the experience which led him to make “Pina,” his 2011 documentary on German dancer Pina Bausch, explaining that his girlfriend at the time had “forced him” to go to one of her performances.
“I was bored before it even started,” he joked, “it was dance, what’s more ballet – that was not my thing. 10 minutes later, I was in tears, like a child, and I didn’t know what was happening. I was taken by someone else’s art, and no film had ever made that impression on me.”
“We are limited by our own vision, so it’s a great adventure to get to see someone else’s vision,” he added. “There are very few adventures left today – all the big adventures have already happened, they’ve already been to the moon – the big adventure today is the human adventure, the human spirit. It’s worth contributing so that others can experience this – I wanted to pass on the virus. That’s kind of the function of cinema: To pass on the virus.”
Wrapping up the masterclass, fest director Thierry Frémaux questioned Wenders, who was born at the end of WWII, on his choice to return to Europe, and particularly to Germany, after traveling the world, to which Wenders said he was deeply upset by the rise of radical nationalism in Europe.
“For me it was a dream, the great dream of my youth and perhaps of my life that there should be this Europe, as a place of peace and unity, which had left all this history of war behind it.
“What pains me is that this dream, even if it began for economic reasons, has not been able to translate into culture and ideas that touch people’s emotions. It has remained the Europeof politicians and not of citizens, and I will fight for that until my death,” he said.
The Lumière Film Festival will wrap on Oct. 22 with the screening of the restored version of Annaud’s “TheName of the Rose.”
