Events for the the exhibition about Wenders at Villa Panza (VA), a property by FAI

SPECIAL EVENTS

FAI, in cooperation with Filmstudio 90 and Associazione Amici di Piero Chiara, has organized several projections of Wim Wenders’s movies.
This selection of films by Wim Wenders is not random but designed to take a closer look at the role of America in his work. This longstanding influence made itself felt from the outset in shaping the director’s approach to cinema. The ties between Wenders and America gradually develop from The American Friend to Don’t Come Knocking by way of Paris, Texas. The aim is to draw a parallel between the exhibition of photographs from his American period in the Villa Panza and his films, key milestones in the course of his life, work and artistic creation.

PROGRAM

Monday, 26 January, 21.00, Cinema Nuovo, viale dei Mille 39, Varese
Non bussare alla mia porta
(Italian version of Don’t Come Knocking, USA 2005, 122’)
The director’s last American film Wim Wenders is an existential odyssey resting on the body and character of the writer and lead actor Sam Shepard, who wrote the screenplay for Paris, Texas. Themes like loneliness, selfishness, the belated pursuit of family warmth and a sort of secular redemption through acknowledgment of the son and the desire to travel a stretch of road together are present in constant juxtaposition with the setting. This is the great American landscape, immortalized by Wenders in dozens of photographs, but also a rereading of space and spaces through the work of the painter Edward Hopper, whose handling of light provides inspiration for the director and cinematographer Franz Lustig.

Thursday, 19 February, 18.30 and 21.00, Sala Filmstudio 90,
via De Cristoforis 5, Varese
L’amico americano (Italian version of The American Friend / Der Amerikanische Freund, Germany 1977, 125’)
Jonathan, a mild-mannered picture framer in Hamburg terminally ill with leukaemia, is persuaded by the American adventurer Tom Ripley to become a hit man for a French gangster. Jonathan’s assignment becomes increasingly risky and Tom, who has become his friend, helps him both to carry it out and to escape the vengeance of the gangsters targeted. Made after Kings of the Road, this film marks the beginning of the director’s involvement with American cinema. Based on a book by Patricia Highsmith, it features the great actors Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz as well as cameos by the great directors Ray, Fuller and Eustache.

Thursday, 5 March, 18.30 and 21.00, Sala Filmstudio 90,
via De Cristoforis 5, Varese
Lampi sull’acqua
(Italian version of Lightning Over Water, Germany 1980, 92’)
A heartrending docufilm that also constitutes the artistic and moral testament of Nicholas Ray, the director of Rebel Without A Cause, Lightning Over Water was born out of the friendship between Wenders and Ray that began at the time of The American Friend. The two directors met repeatedly in New York, not least because they wanted to make a film together, but Ray was already suffering from cancer and close to the end. Surrounded by family and friends, he agreed to be filmed and live his last days before the camera. Wenders thus made a unique film in the history of cinema about life, filmmaking, friendship and death.

Thursday, 12 March, 21.00, Cinema Nuovo, viale dei Mille 39, Varese
Lo stato delle cose (Italian version of The State of Things / Der Stand der Dinge, Germany/Portugal /USA 1982, 127’)
Made in splendid black and white, the film won the Golden Lion at the 1982 Venice Film Festival. Despite its noir overtones, it is actually a reflection on cinema. It begins with a family on the road, survivors of a nuclear war, who arrive at a huge half-destroyed hotel. This is the set of a science-fiction film in Portugal. The director suddenly learns that the money and film have run out. The work stops and it appears impossible to contact the producer Gordon in Los Angeles. The crew sit about waiting in boredom for days until the director Fritz decides to leave for Los Angeles in search of Gordon. He then realizes that he is being followed…

Wednesday, 18 March, 18.30 and 21.00, Sala Filmstudio 90,
via De Cristoforis 5, Varese
Paris, Texas (Italian version of Paris, Texas, Ger/Fr/GB 1984, 150’)
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984, this is yet another masterpiece by Wenders. Harry Dean Stanton plays Travis, a solitary man plagued by guilt for failing to keep the woman he loved. The film opens with him walking along railroad tracks in the desert. He staggers and falls. The doctor who takes care of him finds a card in his pocket with the phone number of his brother, who comes from California to pick him up. Some years earlier, after a fight with his beautiful wife, Travis set fire to the trailer where they lived with their child…