MEDIA RELEASE – for immediate release
German Film Festival 2012
Focus Wim Wenders
The German Film Festival runs from 29th August to 8th September and is held at The New Zealand Film Archive in
Wellington. (Ticket prices: $8/6)
A highly influential contemporary film director, Wim Wenders is one of the most significant representatives of the New
German Cinema of the 70s. He was drawn to filmmaking from an early age and his directing career started at the
University of Television and Film in Munich. Wenders has produced numerous movies, documentaries and short films.
In collaboration with the New Zealand Film Archive, the Goethe-Institut is delighted to be able to bring a selection of
10 films by Wim Wenders to the big screen for a Wellington audience.
Please find more information about Wim Wenders and the films in the attached festival programme.
Short Summary of Films
Paris, Texas
Wender’s “Palme d’Or” Winner in Cannes 1984 showing the magnificent performance by Nastassja Kinski in a screenplay by
Sam Shepard.
Don’t Come Knocking
Western actor Spence is suddenly struck by the feeling that he might not have much longer to live, which results in the
flight from his film set and being chased by detectives through the whole of the US while searching for his children.
The American Friend
Tom Ripley, an American art dealer, makes Jonathan, a picture framer from Hamburg, a very dubious offer: to kill a man
in Paris in return for money with which he, a terminally ill man, could safeguard the future of his wife and child.
Kings of the Road
Bruno has been travelling through the small towns and villages along the East German border repairing the projectors in
the dilapidated local cinemas – one day he meets suicidal Robert…
A Trick of the Light
Who knows about the brothers Skladanowsky who built a projector, the “Bioskop”, at the same time as the Lumière Brothers
in France and Edison in America, and thereby co-invented “moving pictures” in their very own, poetic, poor, endearing
and rather “un-German” way?
Lisbon Story
Philip Winter, a sound engineer and creator of sounds, arrives in Lisbon after receiving a message from director
Friedrich Monroe urgently requesting him to help him with the sound track – only to discover that Friedrich has
mysteriously disappeared.
Alice in the Cities
Through unforeseen circumstances the journalist Philip has to take care of little Alice on a road trip crisscrossing
Germany in a search for Alice’s relatives.
The State of Things A film about what happens to a film crew if they run out of money.
Wings of Desire
An angel allegory filmed in divided Berlin following the story of e two angels, Damiel and Cassiel as they watch over
the people below.
Room 666
Filmed at the Cannes film festival in 1982, Wenders asked film directors whether cinema is an art form about to die.
Goethe-Institut New Zealand
Sprache.Kultur.Deutschland.
ENDS