Wim Wenders famous quotes

Last updated: Jul 22, 2024

Without dreams, there can be no courage. And without courage, there can be no action.
-- Wim Wenders

#Dream #Action
If you travel a lot, if you like roaming about in order to lose yourself, you can end up in the strangest places. I think it must be a kind of built-in radar, which often takes me to places that are either peculiarly quiet or peculiar in a quiet sort of way.
-- Wim Wenders

#Thinking #Order #Roaming
Sex and violence was never really my cup of tea; I was always more into sax and violins.
-- Wim Wenders

#Sex #Tea #Violin
The more opinions you have, the less you see.
-- Wim Wenders

#Opinion
Final cut is overrated. Only fools keep insisting on always having the final word. The wise swallow their pride in order to get to the best possible cut.
-- Wim Wenders

#Wise #Pride #Cutting
Film is a very, very powerful medium. It can either confirm the idea that things are wonderful the way they are, or it can reinforce the conception that things can be changed.
-- Wim Wenders

#Powerful #Ideas #Way
Any film that supports the idea that things can be changed is a great film in my eyes.
-- Wim Wenders

#Eye #Ideas #Support
The Cuban people have an amazingly strong and unbroken spirit.
-- Wim Wenders

#Strong #People #Unbroken
Movies are something people see all over the world because there is a certain need for it.
-- Wim Wenders

#Movie #People #World
Everything is entertainment; criticism is now entertainment and it seems that the French directors have woken up one day and suddenly realised that they were not backed up any more.
-- Wim Wenders

#One Day #Criticism #Entertainment
For us music is mainly part of the entertainment world and is often a luxury.
-- Wim Wenders

#Music #Luxury #World
It's very hard to find critics or a magazine today that will publish material that is genuinely independent and written without any concern about being cut off some distributor's list or not be invited or flown into screenings.
-- Wim Wenders

#Independent #Cutting #Magazines
So I am getting a little bored with defining one type of film as American and the other European or from somewhere else because the division is no longer true.
-- Wim Wenders

#Europe #Bored #Littles
In fact, it is amazing how much European films - Italian, French, German and English - have recovered a certain territory of the audience in their countries over the last few years.
-- Wim Wenders

#Country #Italian #Years
For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.
-- Wim Wenders

#Years #Culture #Lobbying
Entertainment today constantly emphasises the message that things are wonderful the way they are. But there is another kind of cinema, which says that change is possible and necessary and it's up to you.
-- Wim Wenders

#Change #Today #Way
Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie.
-- Wim Wenders

#Beautiful #Writing #Bags
Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.
-- Wim Wenders

#Money #Tuxedos #Opera
Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism.
-- Wim Wenders

#Movie #Real #Criticism
The culture of independent film criticism has totally gone down the drain and this seems to come with the territory of the consumer age that we are now living in.
-- Wim Wenders

#Independent #Age #Criticism
The Yanks have colonized our subconscious.
-- Wim Wenders

#Subconscious
Ibrahim tells his story without a grain of complaint, and this was true for all of the band members. This is very much part of the Cuban spirit and soul.
-- Wim Wenders

#Soul #Band #Stories
On the contrary a film can promote the idea of change without any political message whatsoever but in its form and language can tell people that they can change their lives and contribute to progressive changes in the world.
-- Wim Wenders

#Ideas #People #Political
The world of fashion. I'm interested in the world, not in fashion! But, maybe I was too quick to put down fashion. Why not look at it without prejudice? Why not examine it like any other industry, like the movies for example?
-- Wim Wenders

#Fashion #Looks #Why Not
Many French directors, having now realised there was no more real criticism, that the standards of the past have gone, are very offended about the quality of film criticism.
-- Wim Wenders

#Real #Past #Quality
The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political...And the most politically indoctrinating thing you can do to a human being is to show him, every day, that there can be no change.
-- Wim Wenders

#Eye #People #Decision
What is generally referred to as American-style films are, in fact, studio productions.
-- Wim Wenders

#Style #Facts #Film
I think seeing happens partly through the eyes, but not entirely.
-- Wim Wenders

#Eye #Thinking
My advice is, don't spend money on therapy. Spend it in a record store.
-- Wim Wenders

#Advice #Records #Stores
Before you say cut, wait 5 seconds
-- Wim Wenders

#Cutting #Waiting
Every photo, every 'ONCE' in time is also the beginning of a story starting 'once upon a time...' Every photo is the first frame of a movie.
-- Wim Wenders

#Once Upon A Time #Firsts #Stories
But I think that the spirit of protectionism would be the grave of European cinema. You cannot protect something by building a fence around it and thinking that this will help it survive.
-- Wim Wenders

#Thinking #Would Be #Cinema
Maybe it's the music that enables them to function like that, to always take everything as it comes and never complain about the misery, hardship or injustice.
-- Wim Wenders

#Complaining #Hardship #Misery
In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world - in America first but also in Europe - has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance.
-- Wim Wenders

#Europe #America #Age
In the late 1980s the amount of German films was down to four or five percent of the market, and the remaining 95 percent were American. It is now 20 to 30 percent German productions.
-- Wim Wenders

#Four #Film
I'm getting a little bored by the juxtaposition of American and other cinema. I no longer think this division is as true as it might have been in the 1980s, or the early part of the 90s.
-- Wim Wenders

#Thinking #Bored #Littles
Butte was once a grand city. To me, that city is like one big stage for Edward Hopper. You could put your camera anywhere, and you felt you were looking at his paintings.
-- Wim Wenders

#Cities #Cameras #Painting
Filmmakers and critics wrote about each other and sometimes very harshly. This no longer exists.
-- Wim Wenders

#Sometimes #Critics #Filmmaker
Cinema is a worldwide phenomenon.
-- Wim Wenders

#Cinema #Phenomenon

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