Celebrity Measurements

Legendary German director Wim Wenders has revealed further details of his next project, The Secrets Of Places, a 3D feature doc about Swiss architect Peter Zumthor.

“He (Zumthor) is the architect’s architect. It is also in 3D because architecture needs it,” Wenders commented. It is also in 3D because architecture needs it,” Wenders commented.

The German director has a teaser of the new project, which is being made through his company Road Movies together with Berlin and Zurich-based DCM, and Oslo Pictures.

“As they (DCM) are Swiss and as most of the film will be shot in Switzerland, they are in the driving seat right now to finalise the financing of the film.”

The doc will follow Zumthor’s work on the new Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) which promises to be the architect’s flagship building, and will also chart his work on the addition to the Beyeler Foundation building in Basel.

Wenders plans to start shooting in earnest in late summer or early autumn.

The German director is in Cannes this week with two new films in official selection, competition title Perfect Days and documentary Anselm, about German artist Anselm Kiefer, a special screening in Cannes. He is also one of the interviewees in Lubina Playoust’s Cannes Classics doc, Room 999, directly inspired by his 1982 documentary, Room 666.

In Room 999, shot in a hotel room in Cannes last year, Wenders and 29 other directors are asked: is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die? His answer is gloomy. Wenders is alarmed by the digital revolution. “It’s disappearing fast, [cinema],” Wenders says. It will disappear as the art form we knew might be replaced by something else,” he predicts.

Room 999 is sold by MK2 and will be released in France by Paris-based New Story.

Speaking in Cannes on Thursday, Wenders returned to the theme of cinema being a dying language. He said it would be impossible to make a movie today like Wings of Desire. (“It was flying without instruments and filmmaking is not that any more.”)

On a practical level, the director also claimed that the streamers are making it harder than ever for indie filmmakers to mount their productions.

“I can’t get a crew together. If I wanted a crew to make a film in a month, I could not get one. They are all on long-term contracts with Amazon, Disney or whatever. They are happy to be on long term contracts. They are not paid that well but if you want to do something adventurous, you don’t get anybody,” lamented Wenders, who says he increasingly feels like “a dinosaur”.

“Filmmaking is such a different ball game. “Filmmaking is such a different ball game. You don’t even know how many people have seen it. Reviews? No, mainly there are no reviews and you have no feedback,” he said of the lack of discussion and debate around new films

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