In 1988, Oscar-winning German filmmaker Volker Schlondorff sat down with legendary director Billy Wilder at his office in Beverly Hills, California and turned on his camera for a series of filmed interviews. The conversation went on for two weeks. The results were aired on German TV in 1992 and debuted on U.S. television when it was shown on Turner Classic Movies in 2006. We are presented with a generous smattering of film clips, rare photographs and artwork, but mostly Wilder just sits in his office and talks with the off screen Schlondorff, moving easily between English and German. Clips include: Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, A Foreign Affair, Sunset Blvd., Ace in the Hole. Stalag 17, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment. Wilder discusses all these films, and the actors in them as well. Mostly, Wilder offers his philosophy of movie making from one of its undisputed masters… —IMDb
Volker Schlöndorff (born 31 March 1939 in Wiesbaden, Germany) is a Berlin-based German filmmaker.
He won an Oscar as well as the Palme d’or at the Cannes Film Festival for The Tin Drum (1979), the film version of the novel by Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass.
Schlöndorff has adapted many literary works for his movies, including some critically well-received US productions, but he is also engaged in post-war German politics. He served as the chief executive for the UFA studio in Babelsberg. Volker Schlöndorff also teaches film and literature at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, where he conducts an Intensive Summer Seminar.
He was married to fellow film director Margarethe von Trotta from 1971 to 1991. —Wikipedia