Neither Rainer Werner, nor any of us could have succeeded, or produced the number of films that we did, just on our own. We showed our films to each other, discussed them vigorously and rarely agreed.

The project was founded by Martin Scorsese and aimed at finding and reconstructing world cinema films that have been long neglected. During this time Wenders became fascinated with cinema and saw up to five movies a day at the local movie theater. Wenders is a member of the advisory board of World Cinema Foundation.

Ernst Wilhelm "Wim" Wenders (German pronunciation: [vɪm vɛndəɐs]; born 14 August 1945) is a German film director playwright author photographer and film producer.