Wim Wenders on cinema, the failed European dream, and his new film 'Perfect Days'
Euronews Culture sits down with the recipient of this year's Prix Lumière: the great Wim Wenders.
Transcript
00:00 [music]
00:11 You are the recipient of the 15th Lumière Prize.
00:16 What does it mean to you?
00:19 We know it's an honorary prize, but also a highly symbolic one.
00:23 What does this prize mean to you?
00:26 Symbolism is already in the word.
00:30 Light is the source of cinema.
00:35 They invented electricity.
00:39 Ten years later, there was cinema.
00:43 That's what makes a projection, it's light.
00:47 We make films with light.
00:50 The invention is light, in my head.
00:55 Light is the essence of life.
00:59 This prize is highly symbolic.
01:05 It's a joy more than any other prize I've ever received.
01:10 I heard a fan say,
01:13 "I like being at home, but I also like being everywhere."
01:16 He lives in France, as we know.
01:19 Do you have that feeling?
01:22 For me, cinema has never been a national history.
01:26 I discovered it in Paris.
01:29 I wanted to be a painter, and I discovered cinema.
01:32 It changed my life.
01:35 I was born in 1945.
01:37 There was no Europe.
01:39 Europe was a territory of war.
01:43 A history of many wars,
01:46 especially between France and Germany.
01:49 When my Franco-German career began,
01:53 it was a time of great joy.
01:56 When De Gaulle and Adnan shook hands,
01:59 I was in tears.
02:01 For me, it was the future.
02:03 It was an incredible future.
02:05 It was utopia.
02:07 Unfortunately, there are too many people
02:11 who have the virus to forget all that,
02:15 and who make promises to us
02:19 about a new nationalism in all European countries.
02:23 We saw what it led to.
02:26 It was a great disaster.
02:29 This loss of memory.
02:33 We wanted to ask you a question about "Perfect Eyes,"
02:37 which shook us in Cannes for months.
02:40 And especially about the poetry in this film.
02:45 It's as if it was filling a void.
02:49 Through the story of this man
02:53 who has empathy,
02:56 who serves the public.
02:58 Was it like that for you, to fill this void?
03:02 I felt that when I finally returned to Japan.
03:08 With this vague idea,
03:11 I preferred to make a documentary
03:16 about architects and their public works,
03:20 rather than a social project about toilets.
03:24 And now I've discovered the meaning of the common good,
03:29 which exists in Japan in a very strong way.
03:33 The love of detail.
03:38 While in Europe, it was very sad
03:43 that the big victim of the pandemic
03:47 was the meaning of the common good.
03:51 So I wanted to tell a story
03:54 about why Japan, for me,
03:57 represented so many good social ideas
04:01 about living together
04:04 and about the future for humanity.
04:08 [MUSIC]