Director: Wim Wenders

Features: Anselm Keifer, Daniel Keifer, Anton Wenders

Septuagenarian director Wenders’ restless spirit shows no signs of abating with this visually beautiful and meditative portrait of German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, presented in immersive 3D. Born shortly before the end of WWII, making him a contemporary of Wenders and someone who the director clearly feels a kinship with, Kiefer’s art, which incorporated straw, ash and lead, controversially tackled Germany’s past via its deployment of mythical imagery which the Nazis also utilised. The introductory passages are abstract and lyrical as the camera glides around Kiefer’s huge installation in Barjac France, the size of the installation evidenced in a sequence where Kiefer is shown cycling between his works. Wenders saves the biographical aspects until midway: Daniel Kiefer, Anselm’s son, plays the younger adult Kiefer, while Wenders’ son Anton plays Anselm as a child. The artist is also pictured working on his pieces, hacking at them or blasting them with a blowtorch, and muttering instructions to gallery technicians. The grey and brown-hued studies possess an autumnal beauty, while the 3D photography captures the tactile, grittiness of the artist’s work. Accompanying oral meditations on the German identity are provided by readings from German-language poet Paul Celan and philosopher Martin Heidegger.

David Willoughby

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