Pacific Cinémathèque begins a major retrospective of German filmmaker Wim Wenders this week. The recipient of an Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Wenders has been making movies with a singular cinematic vision for five decades. The screenings, including new digital restorations of many of his key fiction and nonfiction films; rare screenings of early experimental short works and The Left-Handed Woman (1978), produced by Wenders and directed by his frequent collaborator Peter Handke, continue through November and December.
The Guardian lists five Wenders films to watch in new retrospective:
Wenders' first full-length film, Summer in the City, made as his graduation project at the Academy of Film and Television in Munich ("Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München") was dedicated to his favourite band, The Kinks. “Welcome to Iceland, Kinks” Icelandic newsreel, 1965:
Alice In The Cities (1974) trailer:
Tokyo-Ga:
Flâneur Walter Benjamin (Paris). Earlier this month Wenders attended a commemoration of Walter Benjamin in Portbou together with Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan (who created the Walter Benjamin memorial Passages) as well as the granddaughter of the philosopher Chantal Benjamin. The ceremony was followed by reading of texts of the philosopher and a dialogue between Wenders and Karavan on the influence of the Benjamin’s theories in the works of both artists.
