Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS

• Preceding the film: A discussion with Christof Belka, Nele Hertling, Christopher Nell, Ann-Christin Rommen, and Rüdiger Schaper (moderator)

Howard Brookner’s documentary footage has been meticulously restored. Following screenings at European festivals, the restored version is now being shown in Berlin for the first time. The film offers a unique insight into the creation of one of the most ambitious and unusual stage productions of the 20th century.

In the early 1980s, the pioneering theater director Robert Wilson set out to create *the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down*—an international opera that, following premieres of various chapters in Rotterdam, Cologne, Rome, Tokyo, and Marseille, was to have its complete world premiere in 1984 as part of the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles—a plan that ultimately could not be realized due to logistical and financial difficulties.

The film chronicles Wilson’s visionary project and the extraordinary community of international artists involved in it.

Those featured include Philip Glass, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars, Lucinda Childs, and Etel Adnan, as well as patrons such as French Minister of Culture Jacques Lang. Heiner Müller, whose close collaboration with Robert Wilson began with *the CIVIL wasS* at the Schauspiel Köln, and Wilson’s longtime artistic partner, the Japanese choreographer Suzushi Hanayagi, are also part of this polyphonic portrait. At the same time, viewers witness Wilson—then in his early forties—during rehearsals with performers, actors, opera singers, and musical ensembles from Japan, Germany, Italy, France, and the U.S., as well as in rare footage from his family and social circle in the United States.

As the opera takes shape in separate parts around the globe, Brookner captures in equal measure the euphoria, the tensions, and ultimately the failure of an artistic dream.

With great intimacy and a powerful visual language—which also draws on rarely seen excerpts from his very early stage works—the documentary paints a portrait of an extraordinary artist at a pivotal moment in his career.

At the start of the evening, Rüdiger Schaper—who, as a theater critic and friend, has followed Robert Wilson’s work for many years—speaks with Christof Belka, Robert Wilson’s former manager and agent and now co-trustee of the Robert Wilson Trust & Estate; Nele Hertling, director of the Performing Arts Section and former artistic director of the Hebbel Theater, which was among the early producers of Wilson’s work in Germany; Ann-Christin Rommen, who has been Robert Wilson’s close artistic collaborator for life since *the CIVIL warS* in Cologne, and actor Christopher Nell, who appeared in many of his later works.

The director and visual artist Robert Wilson (1941–2025) is one of the most significant theater artists of our time. Born in Waco, Texas, he died on July 31, 2025, in Water Mill on Long Island. He had diverse ties to the Academy of Arts, of which he had been a member since 1996, for decades.

Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS

• Documentary film by Howard Brookner
• West Germany/UK/USA, 1985, original version with English subtitles, 94 min.