Wim Wenders Quotes on Movies (17 Quotes)

I really wanted the film to be shown in the US because Cuba, for a huge section of the American public, has been eradicated from view.

Most journalists today work for the film industry and not as a sort of mirror of the industry. And that phenomenon has struck the French as well.

(I must) drive around a bit in this country before I have the right to make a film here again.

As proud as I am of European cinema, the way to make it survive is not to make it an endangered species but to put it out there in the world.

On the contrary a film can promote the idea of change without any political message whatsoever but in its form and language can tell people that they can change their lives and contribute to progressive changes in the world.

Movies are something people see all over the world because there is a certain need for it.

Film is a very, very powerful medium. It can either confirm the idea that things are wonderful the way they are, or it can reinforce the conception that things can be changed.

Many French directors, having now realised there was no more real criticism, that the standards of the past have gone, are very offended about the quality of film criticism.

In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world - in America first but also in Europe - has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance.

Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie.

Cinema is a worldwide phenomenon.

For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.

Entertainment today constantly emphasises the message that things are wonderful the way they are. But there is another kind of cinema, which says that change is possible and necessary and it's up to you.

I'm getting a little bored by the juxtaposition of American and other cinema. I no longer think this division is as true as it might have been in the 1980s, or the early part of the 90s.

Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism.

But I think that the spirit of protectionism would be the grave of European cinema. You cannot protect something by building a fence around it and thinking that this will help it survive.

So I am getting a little bored with defining one type of film as American and the other European or from somewhere else because the division is no longer true.