The impact of cinematic imagery and photography is the faith of Wim Wenders. When describing the director’s extensive career that spans nearly 60 years, it would be unwise to put this sentence in the past tense. RIGA IFF offers a glimpse into the unwavering faith in experimentation by this New German Cinema pioneer during his early period – image alterations, their wagers with colour, whimsical converging with sound, and framings that map out personal angles. Few classic directors can boast such an orderly filmography, so well studied and analysed, screened and restored – Wenders himself has carefully safeguarded and provided the opportunity for all, including RIGA IFF viewers, to see his short films, because films are “personal, not private”.

The selected period (1967–1982) covers Wenders’ studies in Munich, Federal Republic of Germany, when his work seemed too unconventional for the big screen and too grand for contemporary art altars (films like Same Player Shoots Again (1967) and Silver City Revisited (1968)). The thread continues with his reflection on his first directing experience in the USA, evidenced by the montage film Reverse Angle: New York, March 1982 (1982). As an epilogue to this short film collection, his contemporaries’ thoughts resonate in the short film Room 666 (1982), where his German colleagues that he worked with and stood by – Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who passed away a month after the film was shot at the Cannes Film Festival – also step into the small hotel room.

Foreword by the programme curator: A sum of four miniatures conjures the portrait of a wild young artist, who, like the nine year old character he created in Alice in the Cities (1974), believes that not only the chase along the highway but also turning off of it is a moment of truth yet undiscovered.