Cannes 2023

Cannes 2023: "Anselm", Wim Wenders lifts two taboos on Anselm Kiefer

"Anselm", presented in a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival, is a sensation, a sculptural 3D cinematic journey through the life and gigantic workshops of one of the greatest contemporary artists. The German director Wim Wenders, winner of the Palme d'Or in 1984, was the first to film the incredible creative process of the very mysterious Anselm Kiefer, a demiurge respected worldwide and feared for his extraordinary mystical and monumental paintings and installations. And Wenders also helps us understand the taboo surrounding Anselm Kiefer's crucial relationship with his father. Maintenance.

Wim Wenders at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. He presented in a special screening "Anselm", a 3D film about the German artist Anselm Kiefer. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

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RFI: Wim Wenders, you made a film about Anselm Kiefer called Anselm. Who made this film, Wim or Wenders?

Wim Wenders: It's a very personal film by Wim. I have always felt very close to Anselm's work. We have known each other for over thirty years. And I always had the feeling that he was someone who told with means, roots and knowledge that I shared. Anselm and I, 30 years ago, already talked about making a film. And I always felt that if we ever did, it would be a very personal film on my part. So Wim made the film and I don't know what recipe we made it with. I made the film with my gut. I shot for six different periods, I took breaks, I edited, I thought about what we're going to do next, where we have to go again... We shot twice in his field and workshop in Barjac, once in summer, once in winter. We shot twice in his big studio near Paris. We went to the Rhine, where he and I grew up. Then we went to the Odenwald, where he lived his first ten years as an unknown painter. We took the time six times, each time renewed, to engage and familiarize ourselves with a period of his life, and then to paint a large picture. It allowed us to really bring the viewer into this life and this elusive work.

And since we stopped "painting" our film, this man has still produced so much. I could make a brand new movie there. Since our shooting, he has produced an incredible number of new works, hundreds of paintings.

"Anselm", a 3D film by Wim Wenders about German artist Anselm Kiefer. © Road Movies

In your cinematographic language that you use for Anselm, you establish in a very fast, very clear, very intense and infinitely moving way a comparison between the ruined landscapes of post-war Germany in which Kiefer was born in March 1945 and the immense studios of the artist that resemble real forests of sculptures and installations. Are these workshops the key to understanding Kiefer's work and life?

The workshops are a bit like his inner world. As if he had turned his inner world on the outside. These workshops are not places where spectators can normally enter. These are very private workplaces, even though the Odenwald brickyard is now open to visitors by appointment. The other workshops no longer exist. We rebuilt the first workshop in a similar attic. Barjac's workshop has been transformed into a foundation and is now open to visitors. But we were privileged because we were there when he was still working. And we were also in his studio in Paris, where normally no one ever looks at him when he works.

► Read also: Anselm Kiefer dares color and ecstasy at the Centre Pompidou-Paris

You show how he pours molten lead to several hundred degrees on monumental paintings placed on the ground. Or he sets fire to a painting with a flamethrower. When you witnessed such scenes on location, what did you discover about Anselm Kiefer's desire and rage to create?

Anselm invented an incredible way of subjecting his painting, his art, to time. For example, he puts some paints in the oven. After that, it's as if they had been in the desert for six months, completely parched, with cracks and tears. Or he leaves his paintings outside in the rain. He burns them, covers them with lead. He does a lot of things to introduce the element of time, as if these images have existed forever or as if they come from somewhere in the past. It took a long time. And I don't know any artist who has worked so much time as a working material or as a work process. No one has created such inventions to integrate time into their work.

"Anselm", a 3D film by Wim Wenders about German artist Anselm Kiefer. © Road Movies / photograph by Wim Wenders

The performance with the Hitler salute that Anselm Kiefer performed in 1969 in several countries with his father's Wehrmacht uniform was an important milestone and the first major scandal in the artist's career. However, this father was not only an officer of the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany, Albert Kiefer was also a painter and art teacher for a very long time in post-war Germany. He only died in 2018, shortly before his 90th birthday. Why, in your film, did you not confront or make Anselm Kiefer dialogue with this father figure who is obviously so crucial to him?

I knew about Anselm that his father had never been a positive figure in his life. His father has always been a counter-model for him. He never wanted to become like his father. He was never able to interact with him. This father had certainly pushed his son to paint and had even been his art teacher in elementary school, but Anselm never understood his father. I think he despised it deeply. And I didn't know how to tell that. I also didn't want to find an actor to play the father. It would have come to nothing. I think it was more beautiful to just show how Anselm was doing his tour with his performance in soldier's clothes. And to show the audacity to do such an action at the time. Today, we can imagine that someone is doing it, because today we have the vocabulary for that, performers who do actions in time or to remember something. At the time, it was an individual action. The people who saw him, the only thing they could imagine was, "He must be a neo-Nazi," when he puts on his father's uniform and gives the Hitler salute. That was the only possible explanation. Obviously, it was of course a huge achievement, at a time when the great oblivion [of the Nazi past] was at its height. Taking a stand was courageous. And of course it was also dangerous. At the time, most German art critics put him in the wrong corner.

Here at the Cannes Film Festival, Anselm Kiefer attended the world premiere of your film. He walked the red carpet. How did he react after seeing his work and life in 3D on the big screen?

Anselm only gave me one motto. When we started preparing the film, I asked him, "What do you expect from me? Can you imagine something you'd like to have or that would make you happy? He then told me only one thing: "I wish you would surprise me. For the rest, I'll let you do it." He never intervened. I could do anything I wanted. I was even able to shoot where it was completely taboo, namely precisely his work process, how he "destroys" his works. After the screening, he said, "You kept your word. The film really surprised me."

"Anselm", a 3D film by Wim Wenders about German artist Anselm Kiefer. © Road Movies

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