Writing

Peter Handke

Born 1942-12-06 · Griffen, Austria

Peter Handke (born 6 December 1942, in Griffen, Austria) is an avant-garde Austrian novelist, playwright and screenwriter. In 2019, Handke was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience."

Acting credits

Alice in the Cities poster
7.7

German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected.

Alice in the Cities

1974

The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez poster
4.4

A man and a woman share their musings on love and freedom one summer night. The couple’s conversation meanders through memories, unspoken desires and passion through poetic dialogue.

The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez

2016

Peter Handke: In the Woods, Might Be Late poster
5.8

In the sixties, Peter Handke was one of the first to show how the business works: the writer as angry young man and pop star of the literary scene. As soon as he was on the bestseller lists, he turned his back on the hype. For many years, he has lived and worked in his house in a Parisian suburb, more quietly and more hospitably. Peter Handke's precise, free gaze becomes perceptible in his texts, his conversations, the cosmos of his notebooks.

Peter Handke: In the Woods, Might Be Late

2016

Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers poster
6.7

Documentary about filmmakers of the New German Cinema who were members of the legendary Filmverlag für Autoren (Film Publishing House for Authors). Among them are Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders.

Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers

2008

One Who Set Forth: Wim Wenders' Early Years poster
7.0

The early films of Wim Wenders are now regarded as landmarks of European film. Alice in the Cities, Wrong Move and Kings of the Road became foundations of the German New Wave and cemented the reputation of their director. In One Who Set Forth: Wim Wenders' Early Years Marcel Wehn explores the background to these films. Through personal recollection and rare home movie footage, it documents the director's early life, from experiments with his first camera, via his deviation from a career in medicine in favour of art and film, through to international recognition for the Road Trilogy. Central to these were themes that became cornerstones of all his work: national identity, the importance of personal relationships and the allure of the road. With contributions from the director and the many collaborators who helped define his vision, One Who Set Forth is a compelling account of Wim Wenders' life and work.

One Who Set Forth: Wim Wenders' Early Years

2008

Wings of Desire: The Angels Among Us poster
8.3

This is a documentary about the making of "Wings of Desire" (1987). The director, writer, actors, composer and other contributors speak at length and in detail about how the award-winning film was devised, cast, filmed, scored and edited.

Wings of Desire: The Angels Among Us

2003

Days and Nights in Paris poster
NR

Reencounter with a myth. 40 years since Georg Stefan Troller reported from his adopted home in "Pariser Journal," he returns to his old haunts. A journey through time in a city of contradictions that is always reinventing itself.

Days and Nights in Paris

2004

Dichter Forum Graz poster
NR

Five young writers from the 'Forum Stadtpark' in Graz who were little-known back then play bizarre characters from their manuscripts, which often appeared in book form much later.

Dichter Forum Graz

1967

To Duration: A Tribute to Peter Handke poster
NR

Based on Handke's 1986 poem "Canto alla Durata". The film explores the concept of duration through the Austrian writer's life and work, featuring actor Bruno Ganz reading poems written by Handke.

To Duration: A Tribute to Peter Handke

2017

3 American LPs poster
5.3

Another short was 3 American LPs, which was the first film I did with Peter Handke. It was a film about American music, about three pieces of three LPs. There was a song by Van Morrison, another by Harvey Mandel, and one of Credence Clearwater Revival. It was mainly the music and some shots out of a car, landscapes out of the car window. And it had a little bit of commentary – dialogue between Peter and me about American music and about how American rock music was about emotion and images instead of sounds. That is to say, about a kind of phenomenon, that it was in a way a kind of film music, but without a moving picture. It was a 12-minute film and it was never shown. – Wim Wenders

3 American LPs

1969

The Malady of Death poster
NR

In the space of a short 65 minutes, a woman enters the luxury apartment of a wealthy man with an eccentric fascination for the female form and is paid both for her sexual favors and for lying there naked and letting him examine the aesthetics of her body. For most of the hour, as the concise narration of Marguerite Duras' novel on eroticism and aesthetics fills the aural gaps, actress Marie Colbin's form fills the visual gaps. But unless viewers consider the feminine eyeball or microscopic views of skin exotic and worth lingering over, the eroticism lies more in the imagination than on the screen. In fact, the female body lying on the bed, taken away from the spirit that animates it, is really just a corpse -- raising the question, exactly what is the "malady of death?"

The Malady of Death

1985

Griffen – On the Tracks of Peter Handke poster
NR

Bernd Liepold-Mosser returns home to a place bordering the bilingual region of Lower Carinthia to talk to the people there about their “great son” Peter Handke. His search unearths the many unresolved contradictions and ambivalences of a small place where there is repression of the Slovenian-speaking past.

Griffen – On the Tracks of Peter Handke

2012

Behind the camera

Wings of Desire poster
7.8

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds — with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk — that it might be possible for him to take human form.

Wings of Desire

1987

Wrong Move poster
6.7

Six days in the life of Wilhelm: a detached man without qualities. He wants to write, so his mother gives him a ticket to Bonn, telling him to live. On the train he meets an older man, an athlete in the 1936 Olympics, and his mute teen companion, Mignon. She's an acrobat in market squares for spare change.

Wrong Move

1975

The Absence poster
6.5

Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.

The Absence

1993

The Absence poster
6.5

Four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.

The Absence

1993

The Left-Handed Woman poster
6.9

Mourning for a lost relationship can be every bit as devastating as mourning for someone who has died. In this drama based on the director's own novel, a couple with an unhappy marriage agree to a trial separation. They try to patch things up, and at the same time other relationships begin to develop for them.

The Left-Handed Woman

1978

The Left-Handed Woman poster
6.9

Mourning for a lost relationship can be every bit as devastating as mourning for someone who has died. In this drama based on the director's own novel, a couple with an unhappy marriage agree to a trial separation. They try to patch things up, and at the same time other relationships begin to develop for them.

The Left-Handed Woman

1978

No artwork available
9.0

Four actors analyze the nature of theatre for an hour and then alternately insult the audience and praise its “performance.” TV recording of the premiere at the "Theater am Turm" in Frankfurt/Main.

Offending the Audience

1966

Kaspar poster
NR

Related to the well-known story of how a young man, who came to be called Kaspar Hauser, appeared in a German town in 1828, apparently not able to speak more than a single sentence; A söchener Reiter möcht i wärn wie mei Voter aner gween is ( I want to become a horseman like my father once was).

Kaspar

1974

3 American LPs poster
5.3

Another short was 3 American LPs, which was the first film I did with Peter Handke. It was a film about American music, about three pieces of three LPs. There was a song by Van Morrison, another by Harvey Mandel, and one of Credence Clearwater Revival. It was mainly the music and some shots out of a car, landscapes out of the car window. And it had a little bit of commentary – dialogue between Peter and me about American music and about how American rock music was about emotion and images instead of sounds. That is to say, about a kind of phenomenon, that it was in a way a kind of film music, but without a moving picture. It was a 12-minute film and it was never shown. – Wim Wenders

3 American LPs

1969

No artwork available
6.5

Two young men come to the city in need of new experiences and some action, but life in the city is such that there was nothing left to experience. So the men imagined how one could live. But in the city there were other ideas about life. So begins the story of Philip Spade and Sam Beaumont in the city of San Fernando. The story of a life that we all know, but which never lived up to our expectations: a chronicle of current events.

Chronicle of Current Events

1971

The Malady of Death poster
NR

In the space of a short 65 minutes, a woman enters the luxury apartment of a wealthy man with an eccentric fascination for the female form and is paid both for her sexual favors and for lying there naked and letting him examine the aesthetics of her body. For most of the hour, as the concise narration of Marguerite Duras' novel on eroticism and aesthetics fills the aural gaps, actress Marie Colbin's form fills the visual gaps. But unless viewers consider the feminine eyeball or microscopic views of skin exotic and worth lingering over, the eroticism lies more in the imagination than on the screen. In fact, the female body lying on the bed, taken away from the spirit that animates it, is really just a corpse -- raising the question, exactly what is the "malady of death?"

The Malady of Death

1985

The Malady of Death poster
NR

In the space of a short 65 minutes, a woman enters the luxury apartment of a wealthy man with an eccentric fascination for the female form and is paid both for her sexual favors and for lying there naked and letting him examine the aesthetics of her body. For most of the hour, as the concise narration of Marguerite Duras' novel on eroticism and aesthetics fills the aural gaps, actress Marie Colbin's form fills the visual gaps. But unless viewers consider the feminine eyeball or microscopic views of skin exotic and worth lingering over, the eroticism lies more in the imagination than on the screen. In fact, the female body lying on the bed, taken away from the spirit that animates it, is really just a corpse -- raising the question, exactly what is the "malady of death?"

The Malady of Death

1985