Check out this strangely hypnotic stream-of-thought documentary essay, “Room 666,” made by Wim Wenders at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. The 44-minute film features thoughts on cinema from an impressive roster of filmmakers: Jean-Luc Godard, fellow New German Cinema directors Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michelangelo Antonioni and Steven Spielberg, among others. In an unsettling turn of events, Fassbinder would die of a drug overdose mere weeks after these interviews were shot. (The 31st anniversary of his death was June 10.)
Highlights from the film include Herzog taking off his shoes before answering Wenders’ written question (“You can’t answer a question like that with your shoes on”), Fassbinder discussing the “very individual” films being made at the time which differ from “the films that are no different from television” (an intriguing comment given that Fassbinder’s 1980 epic “Berlin Alexanderplatz” was made for TV), and Spielberg describing himself as one of the “last optimists” for the future of moviemaking.
Hat Tip: The Film Stage.
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