To kick off our mini-season of conversations taped on location at the 2023 Cannes film festival, host Rico Gagliano meets up with legendary director Wim Wenders (Buena Vista Social Club; Paris, Texas). The subject of their conversation:Wenders' new 3D documentary Anselm, which plunges the audience into the work of German fine artist Anselm Kiefer. Wenders explains why he loves making art about artists, and how Kiefer’s dark, often confrontational pieces...are actually childlike.
Every May, the population of sleepy Cannes, France triples—as film pros and cinephiles from around the globe convene for the two-week movie-thon called the Cannes Film Festival. For the fourth season of the MUBI Podcast, we sent host Rico Gagliano into the eye of this celluloid storm, accompanied by an intrepid camera crew, to grab interviews with a cross-section of filmmakers who made Cannes 2023 one of the most celebrated in years.
Guests include legendary director Wim Wenders, perennial Cannes favorites Kleber Mendonca Filho and Monia Chokri, and a slew of new filmmakers destined to be world cinema's next wave — from Belgian hip-hopper-turned-auteur Baloji to New York's wry boundary-smasher Joanna Arnow.
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To stream some of the films we've covered on the podcast, check out the collection Featured on the MUBI Podcast. Availability of films varies depending on your country.
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Heads up, audio listeners, you're about to hear a videotaped conversation. For the full experience you'll find the video version of this episode on Spotify or YouTube. What an honor to be slated in by the great Wim Wenders. Yes, I learned that at film school.- Yeah, well.- Slating... I'm glad you got something out of it. Yeah, that's the only thing I got out of it. That's director of Wim Wenders. And yeah, from his Cannes winning eighties films like <i>Paris, Texas</i>, to his Oscar nominated documentaries about everyone from dancers, to the Pope, he's come a long way since film school. Wenders' work was all over this year's Cannes Film Festival. He had a new feature in competition and premiered a new documentary. This one's called <i>Anselm</i>, about the celebrated fine artist Anselm Kiefer, who, just like Wenders, grew up in barely post Nazi Germany. Shot in 3D, it's a plunge into Kiefer's often dark, large scale art. And a couple of weeks back, right after the film premiered. I talked with Wenders about it. I'm Rico Gagliano. This is the MUBI Podcast. Welcome to a special season of conversations from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. This is episode one. Wim Wenders on <i>Anselm</i>. First of all, thank you for joining us. It's an honor. <i>Anselm</i> an incredible film. Let me start by, this is a pretty heavy first question, but I had to say it, so also in this festival, we have a film called <i>Occupied City</i>, Steve McQueen, this is a movie about Amsterdam in the wake of the Holocaust. We have <i>Zone of Interest</i>, Jonathan Glazer.- Tonight.- Yes. Which is also about- I have tickets!- ...me too. Maybe I'll see you there. Auschwitz is the subject of that film. And then I see <i>Anselm</i> and some Kiefer's early work is about kind of confronting the Nazi past. What is going on that suddenly this is something that filmmakers are tackling again? Well, one of the great things about movies are... That they're precious instrument about forgetting. Because history is something we can learn so much from. If you look at today, and if only a few more people were aware of history, then they know that nationalism is the most dangerous thing on the planet. But a lot of people don't know history and they don't give a flying 'something' about history. So history and movies that deal with history are enormously important for our survival and our culture. And I'm happy that movies have that ability to remind us. I'm happy. Was that your main rationale for taking on this subject matter? No. No. This man, Anselm Kiefer, he can paint anything. He can paint actually everything. He can paint the universe and he can paint atoms and he can paint the Big Bang and he can paint history and he can paint you and me and myth and astronomy and everything. He's not afraid to paint the life, all of it. And because he's a painter of everything, I thought it'd be great to put the audience in front of the whole scope of his work and have them have an experience. I've noticed you like making documentaries about art. As I'm thinking specifically of <i>Pina</i>, I'm thinking of the...- The Pope!- The Pope is a great artist. Yohji Yamamoto, am I remembering the name correctly? Oh, yeah. Yohji Yamamoto?- Yeah, that's the one.- Good. As an artist making films about other artists, why would you, why do you want to tackle that? That is a good question. There's not many adventures left, I feel on this planet, because wherever you go, somebody has been and made a movie of that. But the human mind is a great adventure. And artists are some of the most adventurous people on the planet. And to find out how they do it. How did Pina move me to tears more than any movie ever? And there was just two people on stage, and she moved me to tears. I want to know how she did it. And with Yohji, the stuff, his clothes, you become a different person if you're with him. I want to know how, how does he do it? How does he put your biography into a suit? After you make these films, do you feel like you take a part of their art and put it into yours? I know more about how to live, and sometimes I find out amazing things. Because for me films are a way to find out something. I would never want to make a film about something I know everything about. Why would you?- I mean.- Well, what was... Let me ask you then what's the mystery of Anselm Kiefer that you wanted to... delve into? Where did his imagination come from? How can he paint everything? Where does he take the guts from? And how does he do it? And I find out how he does it. Because a lot of his soul is still the child he was. And that is such a great lesson. If you keep some of that child alive, you can do almost everything. That's interesting, though, because I think if people look at his work, I don't think childlike is the first thing that comes to mind.- I think it's...- Maybe, but after the movie, I think childlike will come to mind. What do you, what part of his childhood is represented in that art? Which is some of the darkest art out there. He lived through some of the darkest part of German history. Some of the darkest part is after that history. Because imagine you are born as a little boy into a place with no history, because the history that place had is so dark and so horrifying that it does, that people want to make it go away. So you live in a country that tells you behind us there was nothing. And there's only a future. And as a little boy, you need a past. You need to know where you're from. And in that vacuum, that we both grew up in, you have to come up with a solution to fill it. And creativity can do that. And that little boy, Anselm Kiefer, we show him at the age of ten, I think was already a great master because he made lots of inventions as a little boy, trying to invent a world to replace the past that everybody told you was not there. Why shoot it in 3D? I wanted the audience to have a real experience. And this is vast. The subject is vast. And looking at a flat screen is like looking at a catalog. And Anselm you cannot understand in the catalog. Look at a thing in 3D, you choose the subject and you look at it flat and you realize the difference. Because in 3D, your entire brain is working. On a flat screen, I'm afraid to say most of your brain is dead.- You're not...- You're really going to say this about most of the work that you've done that I've been watching it with a dead brain? No, I say the condition of a spectator is that only a very small part of his brain is active in front of a movie screen. It is a fact. A lot of it, your brain is not needed. And then there are certain movies where even less is needed.- But some movies need the whole of you.- Sure. But what you get, the information you get only occupies a little part of your brain. In 3D, you yourself are more there at the subject that the film is about than in a flat screen. That's just a fact. Bringing this back to the first question I asked. I can imagine, first of all, in the visual sense, it makes total sense'cause his art is on a huge scale. So showing that scale with 3D is, like of course, going to be overwhelming, but also emotionally, if you're being put into the art that he did early on, if you're being more fully put into it, which is all about remembering, which is about not forgetting history, I mean, is your hope that people feel that more? I'm certain they will feel more about it than in many other films. I'm certain some of the things you mentioned before the one that we're going to see tonight, will put us into us... into the situation of remembering and of making a new effort not to forget that this once existed and this was done on this planet. But I think Anselm does that in a very powerful way. Yeah, there's something, there's a quote that really struck me, which was it's, you pulled it, it's from another interview, from the past, and it was something about the question that we're not asking enough or that intellectuals don't ask enough is would I have behave differently in 1930s Germany than now? It's so easy to think of it now and to think I would not have been part of it. And actually I grew up in a society where everybody, all the grownups, my teachers who I later found out were all Nazis, they pretended, well we had nothing to do with it. You see, most of Germany had nothing to do with it. But obviously almost 100% had something to do with it. And if you judge it today, and if you are confronted with it today, most people said well, especially intellectuals, include us out, we would have not be tempted. You see we would have been against it. But it's baloney. Most people in 1930, a lot of German intellectuals were all for it. And a lot of intellectuals today would be tempted and are in fact tempted by nationalism. Yes, they are. And I mean, I hate to draw the direct parallel, but I mean, it feels like there might be a reason for bringing people's attention to that at this particular moment of, let's say, world history. All power to cinema that does that, because we live in dark times and we live at a moment in history when nationalism is raising its ugly head everywhere, and cinema is a great antidote. Yes! Wim Wenders, his movie <i>Anselm</i> is one doc you will want to see, in 3D, on a big screen. Look for it in theaters soon. Meanwhile, this episode of the MUBI Podcast was hosted and written by me Rico Gagliano. Ciara McEniff is our booking producer. Sean Holdsworth edited the show, and Michelle Cho is our supervising editor. Yuri Suzuki composed our theme music. Our intrepid camera crew in Cannes included Cédric Hazard, Alice Desplats, Rob Godfrey, Solal Coulon and Mathis Toti. Special thanks to MUBI's team in Cannes, Elodie Fagan, Eric Issenberg, Sam Leter, Ilyass Malki, and Josefina Perez-Portillo. This series is executive produced by me, along with Jon Barrenechea, Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca. If you love the show, tell the world by leaving a five star review wherever you watch or listen. And of course, to stream the best in cinema head over to MUBI.com to start watching. Next episode, I talk to Brazil's great Cannes winning filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho. Till then, remember, you are all Palme d'Or winners to me.