The early films of Wim Wenders are now regarded as landmarks of European film. Alice in the Cities, Wrong Move and Kings of the Road became foundations of the German New Wave and cemented the reputation of their director. In One Who Set Forth: Wim Wenders' Early Years Marcel Wehn explores the background to these films. Through personal recollection and rare home movie footage, it documents the director's early life, from experiments with his first camera, via his deviation from a career in medicine in favour of art and film, through to international recognition for the Road Trilogy. Central to these were themes that became cornerstones of all his work: national identity, the importance of personal relationships and the allure of the road. With contributions from the director and the many collaborators who helped define his vision, One Who Set Forth is a compelling account of Wim Wenders' life and work.
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
Itinerant projection-equipment repairman Bruno Winter and depressed hitchhiker Robert Lander - a doctor who has just been through a break-up with his wife and a half-hearted suicide attempt - travel along the Western side of the East-German border in a repair truck, visiting worn-out movie theaters, learning to communicate across their differences.
Fashion model Sylvie falls asleep drunk in the cab of Munich taxi driver Paul, and an impossible love affair beckons. Renegade director Klaus Lemke had previously startled German TV audiences with the biker drama Rocker, announcing an unprecedented, unvarnished freshness and authenticity with nonprofessional actors, real dialect and on-the-fly style. In Sylvie, he adds a disarming tenderness.
An animated film that is critical of society. After being kissed by a "celestial" muse, an inventor succeeds in building a machine that will clothe the naked of the world. But after a "devilish" inspiration, the inventor expands heedlessly into new markets, leading to ever-increasing growth of the machine until it finally enslaves its inventor, who has become a war profiteer.
