Cinematographer

Henri Alekan

2: briefs
13:00: average
26 min: in total

On film.briefs2

Wings of Desire

Wim Wenders · 1987

Wings of Desire (1987) is a West German–French arthouse fantasy set in Cold War Berlin, following an angel who abandons immortality to experience human sensation. Shot in black-and-white for the angels’ perspective and colour for human life, it uses poetic narration, restrained performances, and location-based realism to explore silence, memory, and embodiment. Directed by Wim Wenders with cinematography by Henri Alekan and music by Jürgen Knieper, it won European Film Awards and critical acclaim, though its deliberate pace and abstract structure divide viewers.

13:00

The State of Things

Wim Wenders · 1982

Wim Wenders’ 1982 Golden Lion winner follows a film crew stranded in Portugal when funding and film stock run out. Director Friedrich Munro travels to Los Angeles to find his missing producer, navigating a landscape of mobile homes, unpaid debts, and suspended creativity. Shot across Portugal and California with a mix of black-and-white and colour, and featuring cameos from Fuller, Corman and Kramer, it is a self-aware, deliberately unhurried meditation on the material conditions of filmmaking—and the quiet endurance required when nothing moves forward.