Grizzly Man
Werner Herzog
Self-styled animal rights activist Timothy Treadwell spent thirteen summers alone among wild grizzly bears. Herzog bases his film on Treadwell’s video recordings.
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Grizzly Man
Self-styled animal rights activist Timothy Treadwell spent thirteen summers alone among wild grizzly bears. Herzog bases his film on Treadwell’s video recordings. He talks of a “story of astonishing beauty and depth, of ecstasy and deep inner perturbation” which fascinated him. The film opens in the idyllic Katmai National Park in Alaska, the ideal habitat for brown bears. But Herzog’s voice-over introduces the dramatic end of Treadwell’s life from the start. The film says more about “inner human nature” than about an untouched landscape, the director says.
Kristina Jaspers
Kristina Jaspers
Herakles
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog’s heroes often have to face physical challenges. “Herakles” conjures up the mythical hero who had twelve labours to perform that called for extraordinary muscular strength.
Credits
Werner Herzog, Walter Krüttner
Werner Herzog
Uwe Brandner
Jaime Pacheco
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog’s heroes often have to face physical challenges. “Herakles” conjures up the mythical hero who had twelve labours to perform that called for extraordinary muscular strength. To this end, Herzog presents bodybuilders lifting weights and posing in front of mirrors, intercut with pictures of garbage dumps and bomber pilots. The then 19-year-old director shot his first work on 35 mm film. What attracted him was handling footage from different sources, including shots of “Mister Germany 1962”, which he intercut with his own material.
Kristina Jaspers
Kristina Jaspers
Into the Abyss
Werner Herzog
How can the curse of violence be banned? Werner Herzog has repeatedly addressed the issue of capital punishment in the US.
Into the Abyss
How can the curse of violence be banned? Werner Herzog has repeatedly addressed the issue of capital punishment in the US. In “Into the Abyss” he uses archive material and interviews to reconstruct a triple murder. Herzog interviews the people involved, talking to the condemned murderers Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, to family members, a priest and a former executioner. What did these people see when they looked into the abyss? Can death be pictured at all? Each of these persons tells a different story, while the film’s subtitle suggests yet another interpretation.
Kristina Jaspers
Kristina Jaspers
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Werner Herzog
Herzog sends his protagonist, who was shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War and spent six months in prison under inhuman conditions, on a psycho trip of a different kind.
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Documentary Film
France,
Germany,
UK
1997
77 minutes
subtitles:
German
“Oh oh, this feels a little bit too close to home,” Dieter Dengler says into the camera when a few young Lao men tie up his hands again in the country of his torturers. Herzog sends his protagonist, who was shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War and spent six months in prison under inhuman conditions, on a psycho trip of a different kind. The film became a strategic model for working with re-enactments, for example in “The Act of Killing” (2012) by Joshua Oppenheimer, co-produced by Herzog. Herzog himself re-made the material into a feature film starring Christian Bale.
Kristina Jaspers
Kristina Jaspers
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
Werner Herzog
“Is the Internet dreaming of itself?” Curious and contemplative, but free of cultural pessimism of any kind, Herzog addresses the different aspects of the World Wide Web.
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
“Is the Internet dreaming of itself?” Curious and contemplative, but free of cultural pessimism of any kind, Herzog addresses the different aspects of the World Wide Web. What possibilities are opened by digital networking and artificial intelligence? What dangers lurk in anonymous networks? Herzog’s film is less a critical analysis than a multi-voiced essay where you can watch originals think. The spectrum of interview partners ranges from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to a group of people with electromagnetic hypersensitivity.
Kristina Jaspers
Kristina Jaspers
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
Les Blank
Werner Herzog has a number of cameos in his own films under his belt. In “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” by Les Blank we see him pay for a bet he lost against Errol Morris.
Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe
Werner Herzog has appeared as an actor in several films in the past few years and has a number of cameos in his own films under his belt. In “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” by Les Blank we see him pay for a bet he lost against Errol Morris: if the latter succeeded in getting a theatrical release for his film “Gates of Heaven”, Herzog would be ready to do what the title describes. The director gives his all to live up to his credo that film must be physical, evoking not only Charlie Chaplin in the process. Two years later, Les Blank was to make the documentary “Burden of Dreams” about the shooting of “Fitzcarraldo.”
Kristina Jaspers
Kristina Jaspers
Wodaabe – Die Hirten der Sonne
Werner Herzog
Asked whether his documentary films are ethnological studies, Herzog prefers to compare them to ancient chronicles which record collective dreams.
Wodaabe – Die Hirten der Sonne
Documentary Film
FRG
1988
51 minutes
subtitles:
English
Asked whether his documentary films are ethnological studies, Herzog prefers to compare them to ancient chronicles which record collective dreams and the mental condition of humanity rather than apparent reality. In “Wodaabe”, Herzog portrays the rites and feasts of a tribe of nomads in the Sahara. Special attention is paid to the Guérewol feast, a lavish beauty competition lasting several days where the heavily made-up and costumed men are chosen by the women. Herzog sets this to a version of Gounod’s “Ave Maria” performed by a castrato, thus achieving a surprising and touching alienation effect.
Kristina Jaspers
Kristina Jaspers
