Tokyo-Ga
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
Excerpt of Wenders’s narrating voice: If there were still sanctuaries in our century… If there was something like a holy treasure of cinema, for me, that would be the work of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. He made 54 films. Silent movies in the 1920s, black and white films in the 1930s and 1940s and finally color films until his death on the 12th December 1963, on his 60th birthday. Although these films are distinctly Japanese, they are also global. In them I recognized all families, in all the countries in the world, as well as my own parents, my brother and myself. Never before and never again was film so close to its essence and its purpose. Showing an image of the human in our century. A useable, true and valid image, one in which he cannot only see himself but rather learn something about himself. Ozu’s work doesn’t need my appraisal. And such a “holy treasure of cinema” is just imaginary. So my journey to Tokyo was no pilgrimage. I was curious to see if I could discover something from this time, whether something was left of his work, images perhaps, or people even… Or if in the 20 years since Ozu’s death so much changed in Tokyo that there was nothing left to be found».
DIRECTORY
Born in 1945, he came to international prominence as one of the pioneers of the New German Cinema in the 1970’s and is considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary German film. In addition to his many prize-winning feature films, his work as a scriptwriter, director, producer, photographer and author also encompasses an abundance of documentary films, international photo exhibitions and numerous monographs, film books and prose collections. He lives and works in Berlin, together with his wife Donata Wenders. He studied medicine and philosophy before moving to Paris in 1966 to study painting. His career as a filmmaker began in 1967 when Wenders enrolled at the newly founded University of Television and Film Munich (HFF Munich). Parallel to his studies at the HFF, he also worked as a film critic from 1967 to 1970. Wenders has been a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin since 1984, and holds honorary doctorates from the Sorbonne in Paris (1989), the Faculty of Theology at the University of Fribourg (1995), the University of Louvain (2005) and the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Catania (2010). Since 1996 he has been President of the European Film Academy. He teaches as a professor at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg.
