Jornal da Mostra
Nº 348 > 28ª Mostra > 12/08/2005
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The Berlin Film Festival invests in open-air cinema and brings the summer to a close with birthday celebrations for Wim Wenders
For the third year, consecutively, citizens of Berlin will be able to see films shown in the last Berlin Film Festival in the open air. This year the event will take place August 9 through 14 in the city, and will close with birthday celebrations for Wim Wenders who will be 60 on the 14th. The classic Wings of Desire (18th Mostra) will be shown for the occasion.Set in post-war Berlin, Wings of Desire tells the story of angels observing the population of Berlin in day-to-day life in an endeavor to bring solace to the loneliness and depression in the souls they encounter. One of the angels, Damiel, falls in love with a trapeze artist and wishes he could become human.
Wender's masterpiece was first shown in 1988. Since then, the sky over Berlin - name originally given to the feature - has changed a great deal. At the time, the city was divided - Berlin was marked by a dispute for world power, the stage for the ideological struggle of the Cold War, traumatized by the scar of the Wall that separated two worlds, a frontier that was much more than merely geographical - a field of tension, of invisible outflows of energy, of subjectivity, and of desire.
Wings of Desire is a film about Berlin, but also focuses on the return of Wim Wenders to Germany and his reconciliation with his homeland. Having produced his first films in Germany, Wenders embarked on a second phase in the United States, only, at last, to take up his work once more at home, in a third stage, when he made Wings of Desire.
Nothing more symbolic, then, than to show the feature in the open air in the capital city of Germany, now unified. This was the stage where facts unfolded that recently changed the world. In this sense, the original title becomes even more relevant: "The Sky Over Berlin" may mean that which was hidden, what hovered over German minds at the time. What the citizens of Berlin wished for was the wish of every man - to overcome division, to bring parts together once more, to restore links that had been lost.
At the end of the film, one phrase can be read in the Berlin sky: "à suivre" (to be continued). And in fact, there was continuity: in 1993, after the fall of the wall, Wenders made a second film about angels: Faraway, So Close!, where an angel becomes a human being to be able to observe people in the streets of Berlin close to. He is in search of the former-angel of Wings of Desire, who became a mortal when he fell in love with the trapeze artist.
The Director
Wim Wenders was born in 1945, in Düsseldorf, in Germany. Before his career in cinema, he studied Medicine and Philosophy. In 1966, he moved to Paris to learn techniques in painting, but was not long in realizing his talent lay closer to the world of film making, so much so that he completed studies at the München School of Advanced Studies in Cinema and Television. His first outstanding film was The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971), followed by the features The American Friend (1977, 3rd Mostra), Hammett (1982, 8th Mostra), The State of Thing (1981, 8th Mostra), Tokyo-Ga (1984, 10th Mostra and 27th Mostra), and Paris, Texas (1984, Gold Palm at the Cannes Film Festival, 13th Mostra). Wings of Desire (1987) was awarded the prize for Best Director at Cannes and prize from the Public at the 12th Mostra. He also directed Until the End of the World (1991, 16th Mostra), and documentaries Lightning Over Water – Nick’s Film (1980, 15th Mostra) and Ode to Cologne (2002, 26th Mostra). Last year the Mostra International Film Festival showed Landy of Plenty (2004), where the film maker analyzes patriotic, xenophobic paranoia post-September 11.
Translation into English: Clare Elizabeth Charity (clarecharity@uol.com.br)
