Wim Wenders - Chambre 666 ( Room 666 ) 1982

During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders asks a number of film directors from around the world to get, each one at a time, into a hotel room (Room 666 at the Hotel Martinez), turn on the camera and sound recorder, and, in solitude, answer a simple question: "Is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?".

List of directors appearing in the film: Chantal Akerman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Maroun Bagdadi, Ana Carolina, Mike De Leon, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean-Luc Godard, Romain Goupil, Yilmaz Güney ( audio recording only ), Monte Hellman, Werner Herzog, Robert Kramer, Paul Morrissey, Susan Seidelman, Noël Simsolo, Steven Spielberg and Wim Wenders.

JEAN LUC GODARD: "Okay. I have this piece of paper that Wim Wenders gave me. He has set up a camera and recorder and left me alone. But he didn´t set me, so I can, so I can see the tennis match. It´s the net, it´s the net that´s really talking. So I´ll make like a net. This is an inquest on the future of cinema. The context: Films more and more look like they´re made for TV, in terms of lighting, framing, and pacing. It seems that for audiences throughout the world TV aesthetics have replaced film aesthetics…"









Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-10 June 1982) died of drug overdose few weeks after appearing in this film.







"In Room 666 there's a video camera and a tape recorder. Wenders prevailed upon a bunch of fellow directors attending Cannes '82 to venture into the room alone, switch on the machines and deliberate in front of them on the future, if any, of the cinema and television. (A TV, turned on but silent, is also part of the set-up.) What gets said is, on the whole, less interesting than seeing how the luminaries behave in a room by themselves. Godard and Spielberg illustrate two extremes (but of course!), the former fiddling with various props and communicating cosmic disgruntlement, the latter friendly, precise, comparatively optimistic. Herzog exerts control by taking off his shoes and switching off the TV, Antonioni is the most restless, Filipino director De Leon is admirably brisk. And so on, to moderately engaging effect." /timeout.com review/