The Museum of Modern Art celebrates filmmaker Wim Wenders (German, b. 1945) with a major career retrospective. This series is a cooperative venture with the Berlin International Film Festival-which dedicates its 2015 Homage to Wenders, presenting him with an Honorary Golden Bear award for lifetime achievement-and Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen.
MoMA's retrospective of 20 feature films and numerous shorts captures the breadth of Wenders's career, from his 16mm experimental works of the late 1960s-including Same Player Shoots Again (1968) and Silver City (1969)-to the New York premiere of his most recent film, The Salt of the Earth (2014). This documentary profile of the Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado won the Un Certain Regard Special Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and will be commercially released by Sony Pictures Classics on March 27, 2015.
Also presented are new digital restorations of some of Wenders's most cherished fiction and nonfiction films: The Goalkeeper's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972); Alice in the Cities (1974); The American Friend (1977); Paris, Texas (1984);Tokyo-Ga (1985); Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989); and the North American premiere of the full-length director's cut ofUntil the End of the World (1991). The retrospective culminates with Wenders's vibrant documentaries about music, dance, and filmmaking: Lightning over Water (1980), Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky (1995), Buena Vista Social Club (1999), The Soul of a Man (2003), and Pina (2011).
Wenders will introduce many of the screenings, and will also take part in an onstage conversation with his longtime collaborator Peter Handke, the Austrian author who coscripted3 American LPs (1969), The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick(1972), False Move (1975), and Wings of Desire (1987), in a conversation moderated by Ian Buruma, whose latest book of essays is Theater of Cruelty: Art, Film, and the Shadows of War (The New York Review of Books, 2014). The retrospective also premieres a new digital restoration of The Left-Handed Woman (1978), which Handke directed from his own novel and Wenders produced. IFC Center, with Janus Films, will present a selection of Wenders' films in theatrical runs in Fall 2015.
Organized by Joshua Siegel, Curator, Department of Film, with Rajendra Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, and Thomas Beard, independent curator.
Special thanks to Janus Films, Sony Pictures Classics, the Berlinale, Deutsche Kinemathek - Museum für Film und Fernsehen, and the Wim Wenders Stiftung, a Foundation.
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