Any film that supports the idea that things can be changed is a great film in my eyes.
Any movie that has that spirit and says things can be changed is worth making.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Every kid in Cuba knows what the dollar is worth, it is the other currency and there are many things you can only buy with American dollars.
Everything is entertainment; criticism is now entertainment and it seems that the French directors have woken up one day and suddenly realised that they were not backed up any more.
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.
Filmmakers and critics wrote about each other and sometimes very harshly. This no longer exists.
For us music is mainly part of the entertainment world and is often a luxury.
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.
Havana is one of the poorest cities I've been in the last few years and yet we were never asked for money from anybody during our stay.
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.
I was in the forefront of that discussion for many years and as chairman and president of the European Film Academy had many long debates over this.
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.
I've never been anywhere in my life like it and I only really noticed it when I returned to Los Angeles and then Berlin. Everybody is much better off in these places, there is not poverty like in Cuba, but everybody complains about things.
Ibrahim tells his story without a grain of complaint, and this was true for all of the band members. This is very much part of the Cuban spirit and soul.
In Cuba music is anything but that. It's not a luxury or commercial entertainment but something essential, like eating, breathing and sleeping. It is an integral part of living, and that for me was extraordinary and very moving because I've never lived in a place where this was the case.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Movies are something people see all over the world because there is a certain need for it.
My aim, however, was to make a film that refrained from a political view of Cuba or Havana or these people's lives and just phenomenologically show it as it was.
My answer to this sort of comment is to explain that it is much simpler to make a film that is explicitly political.
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.
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.
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.
Rainer was the most prolific of all of us and he definitely worked himself to death.
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.
Take opera for example - to go to the opera you have to dress up in a tuxedo and pay lots of money.
The Cuban people have an amazingly strong and unbroken spirit.
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.
The more opinions you have, the less you see.
What is generally referred to as American-style films are, in fact, studio productions.
In 1945 the authorities refused the name request Wim and named as reason it's "not a proper German name". So his parents named him Wilhelm, a thing close to Wim.
In 2004 Wim won the important UNESCO Award at the Venice Film Festival for his movie Land of Plenty. The move was also nominated for the golden lion. He won the Golden Lion in 1982 for The State of Things and the FIPRESCI Prize of the same festival for Beyond the Clouds in 1995.
Wim won the German Film Awards three times: 1975: The Wrong Movement 1978: The American Friend 1998: The End of Violence He was also nominated twice more: 1989: Wings of Desire 2000: The Million Dollar Hotel
Wim won twice at the Bavarian Film Awards. The first time in 1988 for Wings of Desire and the second time in 1994 for Faraway, So Close!.
Wim was many times nominated and awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. Here is the list (year, price, nominated movie): Nominations: 1976: Golden Palm, Kings of the Road 1977: Golden Palm, The American Friend 1982: Golden Palm, Hammett 1987: Golden Palm, Wings of Desire 1993: Golden Palm, Faraway, So Close! 1997: Golden Palm, The End of Violence 2005: Golden Palm, Don't come knocking! wins: 1976: FIPRESCI Prize, Kings of the Road 1984: Golden Palm, Paris Texas 1984: Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Paris Texas 1984: FIPRESCI Prize, Paris Texas 1987: Best Director, Wings of Desire 1993: Grand Prize of the Jury, Faraway, So Close!
In 2000 Wim received an Oscar nomination for his movie Buena Vista Social Club.
The documentary Buena Vista Social Club Wim made in 1999, was the global break through the
Wim wrote several books, mostly with cinematographic content.
In 1989 Wim received an honorary doctor title from the Sorbonne University in Paris.
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