ROOM 666 / НОМЕР 666

Leonid Nefedovich
Sep 25
3 min read

1982 / 46' / documentary / West Germany, USA

“There was a general gloom at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. The feeling that the end of cinema was inevitable was roaming everywhere. A ‘black hole’ was opening in film history, so to say. So I thought I would do a survey among my colleagues about the future of cinema. I invited them all to the only available room in the whole town. Room 666 at the Hotel Martinez. There was a single camera in the room and the question was on the table. My colleagues only had to turn on the tape recorder and the camera when they were

ready to give their solitary answers. Godard, Fassbinder, Spielberg, Antonioni, Herzog and other filmmakers gave response to the question: ‘Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?’

Some have answered the question very extensively, others were unsettled by the situation and remained silent, We then cut those out…”. (Wim Wenders)

Screenings schedule:

September 25, 2025 at 3:30 p.m. at the Zhovten Cinema, Anshlah Hall

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DIRECTOR - WIM WENDERS

Biography

Wim Wenders (born 1945) came to international prominence as one of the pioneers of the World Cinema during the 1970s and is considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary German film. In addition to his many prize-winning feature films, his work as a scriptwriter, director, producer, photographer, and screenwriter also encompasses an abundance of innovative documentary films, internationally presented photo exhibitions also well as numerous monographs, film books and prose collections. He lives and works in Berlin, together with his wife, Donata Wenders.

Wim Wenders studied medicine and philosophy before moving to Paris in 1966 to study painting. Though ostensibly pursuing an apprenticeship in the studio of the graphic designer and engraver Johnny Friedlaender, he spent his afternoons and evenings in the Cinémathèque Francaise. This “crash course in the history of film” would become the most important stage in his education, as Wenders soon began to think of film as an “extension of painting by other means”.

His career as a filmmaker began in 1967 when Wenders enrolled at the newly founded University of Television and Film Munich (HFF Munich). Parallel to his studies at the HFF, he also worked as a film critic from 1967 to 1970. At this point in time, he had already directed various short films. Upon graduating from the academy in 1971, he founded, together with fifteen other directors and authors, the Filmverlag der Autoren, a film distribution company for German auteur films, which organized the production, rights administration and distribution of their own independent films.

After completing his debut feature out of film school The Goalie’s Anxiety At The Penalty Kick (1971) Wenders turned to shooting his road movie trilogy, Alice in the Cities (1973), The Wrong Move (1974) and Kings of the Road (1975), in which the protagonists try to come to terms with their rootlessness in post-war Germany among other things. His international breakthrough came with The American Friend (1977). Since then Wenders has continued to work both in Europe and the USA as well as in Latin America and Asia and has been honored with countless awards at festivals around the world, including: the Golden Palm at the Cannes Festival and the BAFTA Film Award for Paris, Texas (1984); the Director’s Prize in Cannes for Wings of Desire (1987); the Golden Lion at the international Film Festival in Venice for The State Of Things (1982); and the Silver Bear for The Million Dollar Hotel (2000) at the Berlin International Film Festival. His documentary films Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Pina (2011), and The Salt of the Earth (2014) have all been nominated for an Oscar.