One of cinema’s most hauntingly beautiful city symphonies, Wings of Desire transcends concrete barriers to explore a Berlin of the imagination. A dispassionate angel stands atop a statue on a winter morning, watching over Berlin. His name is Daniel (Bruno Ganz). He renounces pastoral care of the city’s sad and lonely (and the immortality that goes with it) to find love with trapeze artist Marion. A film about the wall and the fall, it’s full of astonishingly hypnotic images (courtesy veteran Henri Alékan) and manages effortlessly to turn Wenders’ and Peter Handke’s poetic, literary script into pure cinematic expression.

Part of Sunday Brunches – Cinema and the City, 1-30 May 2011, Watershed, Bristol

‘Find a city. Find myself a city to live in.’ Talking Heads, Cities.

Cinema is a potent medium for defining the way we think about cities whether it is the futuristic cityscape of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or the realism of Rosellini’s war-torn Rome Open City. The city in cinema offers both a real and imaginary space.

As part of Festival of Ideas, Watershed presents five films that each rely on the city they are set in but also shape and define it in our imagination – from London (Night and the City) to Shanghai (Code 46) via New York (Do The Right Thing) to Mumbai (Slumdog Millionaire) and Berlin (Wings of Desire).