Jim Jarmusch: Stranger than Paradise

Stranger Than Paradise, Jim Jarmusch, 85’, USA / FRG, ZDF 25.7.1984, OV with German subtitles

Jim Jarmusch supposedly made a short film in three days from left-over footage that Wim Wenders gifted him after the premiere of Permanent Vacation in Mannheim. It is about Eva, who emigrates from Hungary to New York and moves in with her cousin Willie, who refuses to speak Hungarian and displays to her his successful assimilation. This became the first of three chapters in which Willie and his friend Eddie follow Eva from New York via Cleveland to “paradise” – to Miami Beach. But what interests Jarmusch more than the actual plot are his “precise, tender observations of people” (editorial text) and the settings in which he places them. For these, he hopes that “a specific ‘look’ of desolation and physical deterioration will remain to unify the feeling of all locations.”

Jim Jarmusch (*1953) is an American film director, actor and producer and one of the most well-known directors of Independent American Cinema. His films have been shown at festivals in Cannes, Berlin, Locarno and Rotterdam, receiving numerous awards, among them, the Golden Bear and the Palme d’Or, and successful screenings in cinemas worldwide. In cooperation with Das kleine Fernsehspiel, he made Stranger Than Paradise (1984). His debut film Permanent Vacation (1980) featured in the Berlinale Forum.