Up until the 1990s, Road Movies acted as a producer of Wenders' own films. Well-known films of this time include Wings of Desire or Until the End of the World. Since the early 1990s, Road Movies has also co-produced many European productions. Under the leadership of Wenders' partner Ulrich Felsberg, many projects that are still well known today, such as Bread and Roses (2000 film) or Bend It Like Beckham, were co-financed. The expansion of activities led to Road Movies becoming the Road Movies Group, in which individual companies took care of rights exploitation, production and distribution of films.
During the Internet boom around the turn of the millennium, Wenders decided, together with his partner Ulrich Felsberg, to sell Road Movies to Das Werk AG, in return for which he received a twenty percent share in Das Werk.
After the insolvency of Das Werk in 2003, Wenders' entire rights library was stuck in the insolvency estate of Das Werk. Only after the conclusion of the insolvency proceedings were these rights acquired via a Hamburg production company that belonged to a friend of Wenders' and finally returned to Wenders.
Documentary films have always played an important role for Road Movies, including award-winning productions like Buena Vista Social Club (film), Pina (film), and most recently A Black Jesus by Luca Lucchesi. Furthermore, the company has become a leader in 3D technologies with the production of three feature-length films in this format. Wim Wenders' installation Two or Three Things I Know About Edward Hopper at the Beyeler Foundation (Riehen/Basel) in 2020 demonstrated the effectiveness of this technology as a tool for storytelling within a museum setting.
Road Movies is located in Berlin Mitte, inside the building complex of the old "Königstadt Brewery". It shares its office space with the Wenders Images (the photo studio by Wim and Donata Wenders) and the Wim Wenders Stiftung, a foundation which is based in Düsseldorf. Part of its administrative work, the restoration and digitization of Wim Wenders' cinematic work, is carried out from Berlin.
Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders is a German filmmaker, playwright, author, and photographer. He is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among the honors he has received are prizes from the Cannes, Venice and Berlin film festivals. He has also received a BAFTA Award and been nominated for three Academy Awards and a Grammy Award.
Wings of Desire is a 1987 romantic fantasy film written by Wim Wenders, Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger, and directed by Wenders. The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its human inhabitants, comforting the distressed. Even though the city is densely populated, many of the people are isolated or estranged from their loved ones. One of the angels, played by Bruno Ganz, falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist, played by Solveig Dommartin. The angel chooses to become mortal so that he can experience human sensory pleasures, ranging from enjoying food to touching a loved one, and so that he can discover human love with the trapeze artist.
Paris, Texas is a 1984 neo-Western drama road film directed by Wim Wenders, co-written by Sam Shepard and L. M. Kit Carson, and produced by Don Guest. It stars Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clément, and Hunter Carson. In the film, disheveled recluse Travis Henderson (Stanton) reunites with his brother Walt (Stockwell) and son Hunter (Carson). Travis and Hunter embark on a trip through the American Southwest to track down Travis's missing wife, Jane (Kinski).
Buena Vista Social Club is a 1999 documentary film directed by Wim Wenders about the music of Cuba. It is named for a danzón that became the title piece of the album Buena Vista Social Club. The film is an international co-production of Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Cuba.
The American Friend is a 1977 neo-noir film written and directed by Wim Wenders, adapted from the 1974 novel Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith. It stars Dennis Hopper as career-criminal Tom Ripley and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Zimmermann, a terminally ill picture framer whom Ripley coerces into becoming an assassin. The film uses an unusual "natural" language concept: Zimmermann speaks German with his family and his doctor, but English with Ripley and while visiting Paris.
Rubén González Fontanills was a Cuban pianist. Together with Lilí Martínez and Peruchín he is said to have "forged the style of modern Cuban piano playing in the 1940s".
Buena Vista Social Club was a musical ensemble primarily made up of Cuban musicians, formed in 1996. The project was organized by World Circuit executive Nick Gold, produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder and directed by Juan de Marcos González. They named the group after the members' club of the same name in the Buenavista quarter of Havana, a popular music venue in the 1940s. To showcase the popular styles of the time, such as son, bolero and danzón, they recruited a dozen veteran musicians, some of whom had been retired for many years.
Afro-Cuban All Stars is a Cuban band led by Juan de Marcos González. Their music is a mix of all the styles of Cuban music, including bolero, chachachá, salsa, son montuno, timba, guajira, danzón, rumba and abakua.
Omara Portuondo Peláez is a Cuban singer and dancer. A founding member of the popular vocal group Cuarteto d'Aida, Portuondo has collaborated with many important Cuban musicians during her long career, including Julio Gutiérrez, Juanito Márquez and Chucho Valdés. Although primarily known for her rendition of boleros, she has recorded in a wide range of styles from jazz to son cubano. Since 1996, she has been part of the Buena Vista Social Club project, touring extensively and recording several albums with the ensemble. She won a Latin Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Tropical Album in 2009, a Latin Grammy Award for Best Traditional Tropical Album in 2023, a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, and she received three Grammy Award nominations in 2019 and a nomination in 2024.
Eliades Ochoa Bustamante is a Cuban guitarist and singer from Loma de la Avispa, Songo La Maya in the east of the country near Santiago de Cuba.
Philippine "Pina" Bausch was a German dancer and choreographer who was a significant contributor to a neo-expressionist dance tradition now known as Tanztheater. Bausch's approach was noted for a stylized blend of dance movement, prominent sound design, and involved stage sets, as well as for engaging the dancers under her to help in the development of a piece, and her work had an influence on modern dance from the 1970s forward. Her work, regarded as a continuation of the European and American expressionist movements, incorporated many expressly dramatic elements and often explored themes connected to trauma, particularly trauma arising out of relationships. She created the company Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, which performs internationally.
Faraway, So Close! is a 1993 German fantasy film directed by Wim Wenders, who co-wrote the screenplay with Richard Reitinger and Ulrich Zieger. It is a sequel to Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire. Actors Otto Sander, Bruno Ganz and Peter Falk reprise their roles as angels who have become human. The film also stars Nastassja Kinski, Willem Dafoe, and Heinz Rühmann in his last film role.
Hanns Zischler is a German actor known for his portrayal of Hans in Steven Spielberg's film Munich and the Russian Mafia's boss Igor Sergeyevich Baklanov in the 1996 pilot movie Der Clown. According to the Internet Movie Database, Zischler has appeared in 171 movies since 1968.
Lisa Kreuzer is a German television and film actress with credits for appearances in over 120 films and television series.
The Road Movie Trilogy is a series of three road movies directed by German film director Wim Wenders in the mid-1970s: Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of the Road (1976). All three films were shot by cinematographer Robby Müller and mostly take place in West Germany. The centerpiece of the trilogy, The Wrong Move, was shot in colour whereas Alice in the Cities was in black and white 16 mm, and Kings of the Road was in black and white 35 mm film.
The University of Television and Film Munich is a publicly funded film school in Munich, Germany. The school was established in 1966 by decree of the Bavarian government. The University of Television and Film Munich is one of Germany's most reputable film schools with about 350 students enrolled.
Gian-Piero Ringel is a German producer.
Every Thing Will Be Fine is a 2015 German-Canadian-Swedish drama film directed by Wim Wenders, written by Bjørn Olaf Johannessen and produced in 3D. It is Wenders’ first full-length dramatic feature in seven years. The film stars James Franco, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rachel McAdams and Marie-Josée Croze. It premiered out of competition on February 10, 2015 at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival. The film made its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 11, 2015. It was released in the United States in a limited release and through video on demand by IFC Films on December 4, 2015.
Lisa Rinzler is an American cinematographer who works on both feature films and documentaries. She has worked with Wim Wenders, Martin Scorsese, the Hughes Brothers and Tamra Davis.
Anselm is a 2023 German 3D documentary film directed by Wim Wenders, chronicling the art of German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. The film had its world premiere at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2023 as a special screening, where it competed for the L'Œil d'or.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
