Wenders made his feature film debut with Summer in the City Wenders formerly served as the president of the European Film Academy from β He also earned an Honorary Golden Bear in He is an active photographer, emphasizing images of desolate landscapes.
His father, Heinrich Wenders, was a surgeon. The Dutch name "Wim" is a shortened version of the baptismal name "Wilhelm". As a boy, Wenders took unaccompanied trips to Amsterdam to visit the Rijksmuseum. He graduated from high school in Oberhausen in the Ruhr area. He then studied medicine at the University of Freiburg β64 and philosophy at the University of Dusseldorf β65 , but dropped out and moved to Paris in October in order to become a painter.
Wenders completed several short films before graduating from the Hochschule with a 16mm black-and-white film, Summer in the City , his feature directorial debut. Wenders's career began in the late s, the New German Cinema era.
Protagonist Hans Zischler is released from prison, and after searching through seedy West German streets and bars, he visits an old friend in Berlin. The film was adapted from Peter Handke 's short novel. He then directed the period drama The Scarlet Letter , adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne 's novel of the same name.
From to Wender directed the Road Movie trilogy. The first film in the trilogy was Alice in the Cities , which was shot in 16mm. The film is adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel Ripley's Game. Critic Roger Ebert wrote of the film, "[it's] a movie with the kind of passion and willingness to experiment that was more common fifteen years ago than it is now.
