Werner Herzog

Started by adolfwolfli, August 06, 2003, 01:05:56 PM

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pete

I just read in the taiwanese newspaper that he said something about how he wasn't interested in Germany entering the worldcup finals.  he said how beautiful it would be if the championchip was between an Asian team and an African team.
and also found out they are doing a herzog retrospective in Taipei next week.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

pete

wow, when I was in Boston, they had a Herzog retrospective and a talk.  then I went to Taiwan, and the retrospective followed me there, and as soon as I moved to SF, they have one here too!  Either herzog retrospectives are the new Starbucks or there is something in my blood besides AIDS.
"Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot."
- Buster Keaton

MacGuffin

Herzog in Antarctica: An easy place to make a film

Werner Herzog, who has made movies about grizzly bears in Alaska and a downed fighter pilot in Laos, just finished filming in Antarctica and one thing he wants to make clear: it was easy.

Herzog, 64, filmed at Mount Erebus, home of a live volcano, in the Antarctic spring.

While he acknowledged it was cold, and the crew had to spend a couple days getting acclimatized before they could reach the 13,500-foot (4,118-meter) summit -- which feels about 3,000 feet higher due to low air pressure -- he praised the ease of the location.

"It's easy. Antarctica is easy," Herzog, 64, said in a recent interview with Reuters as he waited on the ice to board a military jet at the end of filming.

The award-winning German-born filmmaker, screenwriter, actor and opera director is known for such art house movies as "Fitzcarraldo" and "Nosferatu."

His other recent projects have included "Grizzly Man," a documentary about activists in Alaska who were killed by the grizzly bears they meant to protect, and "Rescue Dawn," about a U.S. fighter pilot shot down over Laos during the Vietnam war.

People get the wrong impression of the harshness of the place, based on the heroic age of Antarctic explorers like Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton, Herzog said.

"It's a perpetuated sort of image since the days of 1903 or 1910 or 1911, when Scott and Amundsen and Shackleton were out here," he said. "Now you have got a cafeteria, you have got the barber shop and the TV station. You've got the ATM machine, so what else can you ask for?"

These considerable amenities are at McMurdo Station, the biggest U.S. science installation on the continent, where Herzog was based for the filming of this project, a documentary set to air on the Discovery Channel next year.

ANTI-HUMAN CONTINENT? NO

"Good transportation, a warm bed, a shower," Herzog went on, referring to conditions in Antarctica. "It is easy and nobody should try to perpetuate the aspect that this is a wild, furiously anti-human sort of continent."

He became interested in making a movie in Antarctica after seeing some underwater footage taken near McMurdo by the diver and experimental guitarist Henry Kaiser, Herzog said.

The director, who lives in Los Angeles, was enthusiastic but dubious when Kaiser, a veteran Antarctic hand, suggested filmmaking on the southern continent.

"Somehow, casually, he asked me, 'Wouldn't you like to go to Antarctica?' And I said yes, but I'm not useful here: I'm not a pilot, I'm not a scientist, I'm not a cook, I'm not a mechanic. I'm not needed, not wanted and kind of useless."

Ultimately, Herzog went to Antarctica as part of the National Science Foundation's program for artists and writers.

Antarctica has long been a subject that has captivated filmmakers, starting as early as 1913 with an Australian movie about life in the Antarctic and continuing through to the tap-dancing, environmentally aware penguins of this season's animated hit "Happy Feet."

Often the theme is the folly of human dreams of conquering this hostile land.

George Butler, maker of the 2000 documentary "The Endurance," about Shackleton's harrowing voyage to Antarctica -- which turned into a mission to keep his crew alive -- said he was captivated by the continent, which he called "the most beautiful place on Earth."

Butler praised the wildlife, the variety of birds, the changeability of the light, and the unspoiled nature of it.

"I always try to make movies that are beyond imagination," Butler said. "It's beyond the average person's imagination, and that fascinates people."

Herzog's focus was more on the people who work in Antarctica now, and the fine weather he encountered was not to his taste.

"It looked like stupid postcards: blue sky," Herzog said. "And so I'd like to be here in the twilight months . But it wouldn't make sense because hardly anyone is left then.

"And my feeling is very much about the people who end up here, who do science, who service the community, who do logistics, who do the dishwashing," he said. "You do not find good men and good women like that easily anywhere."
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

JG

hey boston kids - wrath of god and kaspar hauser at the brattle this weekend.  sit next to me. 

MacGuffin

Herzog sends witty postcard from "End of World"

Cinema's self-styled anthropologist, Werner Herzog, whose "Grizzly Man" emerged as one of 2005's more intriguing documentaries, returns with another unique travelogue.

"Encounters at the End of the World" finds Herzog accepting an invitation from the National Science Foundation to pay a visit to Antarctica's McMurdo Station, despite having warned them in advance that he's not at all inclined to make a penguin film.

Instead, he and cameraman Peter Zeitlinger are more concerned with the kind of people who'd be drawn to this desolate corner of the earth, and some of those subjects prove to be just as colorful and intriguing as the more exotic species swimming around beneath the ice.

While oddly shaped, the impressive-looking and sounding Discovery Channel release retains considerable entertainment value on the strength of Herzog's never-dull, very personal narrating style.

After doing some of the obligatory touristy things -- at least, what would pass for touristy in an industrial-looking compound that's home to more than 1,000 research-related personnel every October through February -- Herzog focuses on a sampling of those individuals and uncovers some subtle shared traits between them and the wildlife they're monitoring.

He also spends some time at an orientation program, where newcomers to McMurdo stumble around in the snow wearing buckets over their heads in a simulation of extreme blizzard conditions.

And, despite his initial anti-penguin stance, Herzog ultimately comes around, but only on his inimitable terms, asking an uncomfortable expert the tough questions about whether there were any gay penguins or if others were prone to madness.

Coming from the filmmaker who in the past has been drawn to individuals driven to building opera houses in the middle of the Peruvian jungle or out to prove that a Grizzly is man's best friend, nothing less would be expected.

Narrator: Werner Herzog.

Director: Werner Herzog; Producer: Henry Kaiser; Executive producers: Erik Nelson, Dave Harding, Phil Fairclough, Julian Hobbs; Director of photography: Peter Zeitlinger; Music: Henry Kaiser, David Lindley; Editor: Joe Bini.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

Heinsbergen

herzog is the main reason why i'm proud to be a german. actually there are no other reasons cause i can't think of any.

my favorite is probably "aguirre", because i'm convinced the opening shot is one of the greatest cinematic moments ever created. anyone seen "fata morgana"? his greatest achievement right next to "aguirre" in my opinion. the first and maybe last movie (i should count trier's "element of crime" in) to ever really hypnotize me in some strange way. i'm always slightly dissapointed with "even dwarfs started small", can't really connect with it.
when i was a little kid i wanted to know what caused thunder.

hedwig

Quote from: Heinsbergen on September 24, 2007, 04:25:40 PM
herzog is the main reason why i'm proud to be a german. actually there are no other reasons cause i can't think of any.


ElPandaRoyal

I've seen Aguirre a couple of weeks ago and it really blew my mind. The impact wasn't that obvious right after it was finished, but for the following days I couldn't think about anything else. Great, great, great performance by Kinski, and a great approach to the material, with some wonderfully scary scenes. This one is really great.
Si

Heinsbergen

Quote from: ElPandaRoyal on September 24, 2007, 07:02:27 PM
I've seen Aguirre a couple of weeks ago and it really blew my mind. The impact wasn't that obvious right after it was finished, but for the following days I couldn't think about anything else. Great, great, great performance by Kinski, and a great approach to the material, with some wonderfully scary scenes. This one is really great.

the music by popol vuh should be mentioned here. simply amazing. without it the film wouldn't have been that impressive.
when i was a little kid i wanted to know what caused thunder.

ElPandaRoyal

Quote from: Heinsbergen on September 25, 2007, 03:20:47 AM
Quote from: ElPandaRoyal on September 24, 2007, 07:02:27 PM
I've seen Aguirre a couple of weeks ago and it really blew my mind. The impact wasn't that obvious right after it was finished, but for the following days I couldn't think about anything else. Great, great, great performance by Kinski, and a great approach to the material, with some wonderfully scary scenes. This one is really great.

the music by popol vuh should be mentioned here. simply amazing. without it the film wouldn't have been that impressive.


You're right, I shouldn't have forgotten to mention it, but for me the real standout was (as always) the intensity of Klaus Kinski. That creep can roll, man.
Si

elpablo

I feel like no one here is from the Philadelphia area, but I'll post this just in case because I'm probably wrong:

http://cinemastudies.upenn.edu/

Scroll down to next week on the right side.

Herzog is apparently going to be around next week. They'll be screening a couple of his films and he'll be around for discussions on one or two of those nights. Everything is free an open to the public.

elpablo



I love this man. I want to fall asleep in his arms while he reads me excerpts from classical Greek literature.

Reinhold

MoMA is screening a few Herzog films on Saturday, December 8.

2:00 p.m.
Film Screenings & Events
Aguirre, the Wrath of God. 1972. West Germany. Werner Herzog. 95 min.
In the Film exhibition Collaborations in the Collection


4:00 p.m.
Film Screenings & Events
Woyzeck. 1979. West Germany. Werner Herzog. 80 min.
In the Film exhibition Collaborations in the Collection


6:00 p.m.
Film Screenings & Events
Fitzcarraldo. 1982. West Germany. Werner Herzog. 160 min.
In the Film exhibition Collaborations in the Collection


Quote from: Pas Rap on April 23, 2010, 07:29:06 AM
Obviously what you are doing right now is called (in my upcoming book of psychology at least) validation. I think it's a normal thing to do. People will reply, say anything, and then you're gonna do what you were subconsciently thinking of doing all along.

Alexandro

there's a really cool letter from ebert to herzog up in rogerebert.com

my favorite line from roger: "What must be true, must be true. What must not be true, can be made more true by invention."

Redlum

Mark Kermode interviews Werner Herzog for Rescue Dawn.

\"I wanted to make a film for kids, something that would present them with a kind of elementary morality. Because nowadays nobody bothers to tell those kids, \'Hey, this is right and this is wrong\'.\"
  -  George Lucas