Peter Handke
In the sixties, Peter Handke was one of the first to show how the business works: the writer as angry young man and pop star of the literary scene. As soon as he was on the bestseller lists, he turned his back on the hype. For many years, he has lived and worked in his house in a Parisian suburb, more quietly and more hospitably. Peter Handke's precise, free gaze becomes perceptible in his texts, his conversations, the cosmos of his notebooks.
A man and a woman share their musings on love and freedom one summer night. The couple’s conversation meanders through memories, unspoken desires and passion through poetic dialogue.
Documentary about the making of Wim Wenders 1987 German film Wings of Desire
When guardian angel Seth -- who invisibly watches over the citizens of Los Angeles -- becomes captivated by Maggie, a strong-willed heart surgeon, he ponders trading in his pure, otherworldly existence for a mortal life with his beloved. The couple embarks on a tender but forbidden romance spanning heaven and Earth.
Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.
Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds -- with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk -- that it might be possible for him to take human form.
In the space of a short 65 minutes, a woman enters the luxury apartment of a wealthy man with an eccentric fascination for the female form and is paid both for her sexual favors and for lying there naked and letting him examine the aesthetics of her body. For most of the hour, as the concise narration of Marguerite Duras' novel on eroticism and aesthetics fills the aural gaps, actress Marie Colbin's form fills the visual gaps. But unless viewers consider the feminine eyeball or microscopic views of skin exotic and worth lingering over, the eroticism lies more in the imagination than on the screen. In fact, the female body lying on the bed, taken away from the spirit that animates it, is really just a corpse -- raising the question, exactly what is the "malady of death?"
Mourning for a lost relationship can be every bit as devastating as mourning for someone who has died. In this drama based on the director's own novel, a couple with an unhappy marriage agree to a trial separation. They try to patch things up, and at the same time other relationships begin to develop for them.
A young German man who has just arrived in America, hopes to get over the collapse of his marriage. However, he soon discovers that his ex-wife is pursuing him.
Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change.
The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a 1972 German language drama film directed by Wim Wenders. It was adapted from a novella by Wenders' long-time collaborator Peter Handke. A goalkeeper is sent off during a game for committing a foul. He spends the night with a cinema cashier, whom he afterwards kills. Although a type of detective film, it is more slow moving and contemplative than other films of the genre. It explores the monotony of the murderer's existence and, like many of Wenders' films, the overwhelming cultural influence of America in post-war West Germany.
About two young men who come to the city in need of new experiences and some action. But life in the city is such that there was nothing left to experience. So the men imagined how one could live. But in the city there were other ideas about life. So begins the story of Philip Spade and Sam Beaumont in the city of San Fernando. The story of a life that we all know, but which never lived up to our expectations: a chronicle of current events.
Another short was 3 American LPs, which was the first film I did with Peter Handke. It was a film about American music, about three pieces of three LPs. There was a song by Van Morrison, another by Harvey Mandel, and one of Credence Clearwater Revival. It was mainly the music and some shots out of a car, landscapes out of the car window. And it had a little bit of commentary – dialogue between Peter and me about American music and about how American rock music was about emotion and images instead of sounds. That is to say, about a kind of phenomenon, that it was in a way a kind of film music, but without a moving picture. It was a 12-minute film and it was never shown. – Wim Wenders
Four actors analyze the nature of theatre for an hour and then alternately insult the audience and praise its “performance.” TV recording of the premiere at the "Theater am Turm" in Frankfurt/Main.
