Wim Wenders in Tokyo

German filmmaker and photographer Wim Wenders will be in town later this month for a couple (perhaps more?) events that those in the Tokyo area might be interested in.

At the new Omotesando Hills building there will be an exhibition entitled Journey to Onomichi, featuring photos by Wenders and his wife Donata, which will run from April 29 – May 7. The series came about in part because of Wenders’ long-term desire to visit Onomichi, which figures prominently in one of Wenders’ favorite films, Ozu’s Tokyo Story. (Interesting to note that just a month or two after the Wenders visited Onomichi, I did too for much the same reasons).

On May 1st, Wenders will be lecturing and presenting some short films of his at the Ikebukuro campus of Rikkyo University (poster here). The event is free. I believe he’ll be speaking in English with a Japanese interpreter but I’m not sure.

There was a time when I was a huge Wenders fan, starting from when I first saw Paris, Texas (in Texas, appropriately enough, in 1985). Later that year I would see his documentaries Chambre 666, Reverse Angle, and Tokyo-ga, the latter of which still to this day I can see reverberating around in my head (as I wrote briefly about here). The “back catalogue” so to speak — particularly his first “road” film, Alice in the Cities, was also very influential to me at the time. But then for some reason, the wheels fell off; blame it on Wings of Desire, which I could never “get”. They all seemed to get progressively more pretentious after that.

Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I’m keen to get re-in-touch with Wenders again.

UPDATE: Another Wenders’ event I’ve come across is a May 2nd “all-night” screening of three of Wenders’ films (Paris, Texas; Buena Vista Social Club; and Land of Plenty) at the Shin-bungeiza movie theater in Ikebukuro. According to the listing, Wenders will be there to introduce the film screening.

3 Replies to “Wim Wenders in Tokyo”

  1. Let me know when you go to an event as I would like to join.

    As for his photos, I used to like them but recently I found them to be not so special anymore. It may sound heretic, but looking at the sample shots on the site, I cannot see much in there that we haven’t photographed ourselves already. The right hand picture on page 2 is very similar to http://www.unicircuits.com/gallery/two_sundays/tea_walking , for example.

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