Wim Wenders

“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.”

“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.”

“Any film that supports the idea that things can be changed is a great film in my eyes.”

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

“Neither Rainer Werner, nor any of us could have succeeded, or produced the number of films that we did, just on our own. We showed our films to each other, discussed them vigorously and rarely agreed.”

“The Cuban people have an amazingly strong and unbroken spirit.”

“Maybe it's the music that enables them to function like that, to always take everything as it comes and never complain about the misery, hardship or injustice.”

“Butte was once a grand city. To me, that city is like one big stage for Edward Hopper. You could put your camera anywhere, and you felt you were looking at his paintings.”

“Cinema is a worldwide phenomenon.”

“In fact, it is amazing how much European films - Italian, French, German and English - have recovered a certain territory of the audience in their countries over the last few years.”

“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.”

“Any movie that has that spirit and says things can be changed is worth making.”

“In the late 1980s the amount of German films was down to four or five percent of the market, and the remaining 95 percent were American. It is now 20 to 30 percent German productions.”

“For us music is mainly part of the entertainment world and is often a luxury.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The more opinions you have, the less you see.”

“The culture of independent film criticism has totally gone down the drain and this seems to come with the territory of the consumer age that we are now living in.”

“It's very hard to find critics or a magazine today that will publish material that is genuinely independent and written without any concern about being cut off some distributor's list or not be invited or flown into screenings.”