nwFilmCenter

A Quest for the Sublime:
The Films of Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog rose to prominence in the 1970s as a central figure in the New German Cinema movement along with Rainer Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorf, Margarethe von Trotta, Wim Wenders and others looking for a more personal cinema. Beginning with such heralded films as AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD and WOYZECK, Herzog's career in the decades since has been distinguished by a continuing fascination with characters possessed by a unique vision, their escapades set against hauntingly powerful landscapes—from the Amazon jungle to the Sahara Desert to the Antarctic tundra. Herzog has said, "It is the human soul that is visible through the landscapes presented in my films." He has also characteristically disregarded the distinction between narrative film and documentary in pursuit of a more profound truth: "Through invention, through imagination, through fabrication, I become more truthful than the little bureaucrats." Herzog has transcended the New German Cinema movement to become—as Milos Forman, Francois Truffaut and many other fellow filmmakers have asserted—one of the great cinema artists of our era.

Fri, May 2, 2008 at 7 PM	ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD PORTLAND PREMIERE DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG US Refusing to "make a movie about cute, fluffy penguins," Herzog travels to Antarctica to capture the great frozen landscape in all its stark beauty, finding his characters among the "professional dreamers" who live and work at the McMurdo research station—including a female researcher who moonlights as a contortionist, a PhD-holding forklift operator, and scientists who jam out on their electric guitars to celebrate the discovery of three new aquatic species in one day. In the process, Herzog's Antarctic landscape becomes a meditation on humanity's long history of exploring to demonstrate courage and self-worth, a paradigm vanishing with the conquest and destruction of the last unexplored continent. ( 99 min ) Sponsored by German American School of Portland ^ Top
Sat, May 3, 2008 at 7 PM	FITZCARRALDO DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG PERU/GERMANY Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, nicknamed "Fitzcarraldo" by the South American natives among whom he lives, is an eccentric visionary who dreams only on an epic scale. Already bankrupted by a Trans-Andean railroad scheme, he next decides to build a world-class opera house in the middle of the Peruvian jungle. To raise the funds, he plans to harvest a grove of rubber trees that is made inaccessible by nearby rapids. His solution: to introduce a modern steamship to the unruly waterway by dragging the entire vessel overland—a feat which Herzog himself, in true Fitzcarraldo fashion, obstinately accomplished without the aid of special effects or miniatures. ( 158 min ) Sponsored by the French American International School/ Gilkey International Middle School ^ Top
Sun, May 4, 2008 at 7 PM	THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG GERMANY Herzog's most famous short takes as its subject the champion ski-flier Walter Steiner, who broke the world ski-flying record in Yugoslavia in 1974. Yet this is no mere sports film. Herzog delves into the eccentricities of the man himself (by day, he is a woodcarver who likes to leave his whittled figurines on mountainside paths for passersby to stumble upon), and explores the ambition that carries Steiner flying on his skis beyond the bounds of the natural world. ( 45 min ) ^ Top
Sun, May 4, 2008 at 7 PM	LESSONS OF DARKNESS DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG FRANCE/BRITAIN/GERMANY In 1992, Herzog traveled to Kuwait at the end of the Gulf War to capture the images of modern war: oil fields set ablaze by retreating Iraqi forces, and the scarred, burnt corpses of buildings, automobiles, and humans left behind; the bloodied torture chambers left empty but echoing with stories of horror; the tears of a Kuwaiti woman whose sons were killed and whose grief needs no translation. The result is a uniquely poignant film, frequently described as part documentary, part science fiction, and part anti-war tract. ( 50 min ) ^ Top
Thu, May 8, 2008 at 7 PM Sat, May 10, 2008 at 9 PM	WOYZECK DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG GERMANY Based upon a pre-modernist stage play by 19th-century German playwright George Buchner, WOYZECK stars Klaus Kinski in a role rather uncharacteristic of a Herzogian hero—not an adventurer, a visionary, or an arriviste, but a lowly soldier who, at the age of forty, is still working as a barber. Bullied and abused by his commanding officer, his doctor, and his adulterous wife, Woyzeck descends into madness as he begins to believe that self-determination can be achieved only through murder. ( 82 min ) Introducing the film tonight and on hand for a post-film discussion will be Dr. Ralph Beaumont, a faculty member of the Oregon Psychoanalytical Institute and OHSU. ^ Top
Fri, May 9, 2008 at 7 PM	COBRA VERDE DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG GHANA/GERMANY Francisco Manoel da Silva is a notorious con artist hired by an unwitting Brazilian sugar baron to manage his plantation. When da Silva's true identity is revealed (as well as his impregnation of his boss's three daughters), the baron sends da Silva on a dangerous mission to Africa to reopen the slave trade. Against all odds, da Silva succeeds, even forming an army of warrior women to defend his interests against the murderous natives. Filmed on location in Brazil, Ghana, and Colombia, COBRA VERDE marks the final collaboration between Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski, who memorably played the lead in five of Herzog's early films. ( 111 min ) ^ Top
Sat, May 10, 2008 at 7 PM	AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG GERMANY/MEXICO/PERU Spanish explorer Gonzalo Pizarro leads an expedition into the Peruvian jungle in search of the famed El Dorado, but is stalled by torrential rains. A smaller party sent ahead to scout the trail includes a man named Aguirre (Klaus Kinski in a career-defining role) as second-in-command. Aguirre resolves that his allegiance is better devoted to himself than to Spain; he overthrows the leader and mercilessly drives the men further into the jungle seeking glory and riches. One by one the conquistadors are swallowed by the jungle, but Aguirre—calling himself "the Wrath of God"—will not be deterred, pursuing his ambition even into madness and death. ( 93 min ) ^ Top
Sun, May 11, 2008 at 7 PM	ECHOES FROM A SOMBER EMPIRE DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG FRANCE/GERMANY Armed with his camera, Herzog follows journalist Michael Goldsmith on his return to the Central African Republic, where Goldsmith was imprisoned and tortured for reporting on the regime of Jean-Bedel Bokassa—a dictator who was later accused of everything from the murder of his countrymen to cannibalism. Herzog intersperses interviews of Goldsmith with those of Bokassa's wives, children, lawyers and associates, adding stock footage of Bokassa's extravagant coronation and state affairs. ECHOES FROM A SOMBER EMPIRE is a fascinating document of the decadence and downfall of a tyrant. ( 91 min ) ^ Top
Fri, May 16, 2008 at 7 PM	THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER (aka EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF AND GOD AGAINST ALL) DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG GERMANY In 1828, a young man named Kaspar Hauser suddenly appeared in Nuremberg. He carried only a Bible, and was barely able to talk. The town folk eventually learned he had been imprisoned in a cellar by an unknown guardian for the first twenty years of his life. Adopted by a kind couple and taught to read, write, and play the piano, Hauser became an object of curiosity to aristocrats desiring an amusing party centerpiece, and to scientists and philosophers seeking evidence of man's "natural" state. Herzog found the perfect Hauser in Bruno S., a street performer who spent twenty-three of the first twenty-six years of his life in mental institutions; Herzog described him as "the unknown soldier of the cinema." ( 110 min ) ^ Top
Fri, May 16, 2008 at 9:15 PM Sat, May 17, 2008 at 7 PM	GRIZZLY MAN DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG US In the fall of 2003, Timothy Treadwell, an avid naturalist who spent thirteen summers living among grizzly bears in Alaska's Katmai National Park and Reserve, was mauled and killed, along with his girlfriend, by one of the bears that he swore to protect. Herzog combines footage culled from the one hundred hours of self-shot video left by Treadwell with interviews of those who knew him, presenting a portrait of a complicated man whose conviction bordered on obsession and madness and whose fate was not only tragically inevitable but perhaps also, as one interviewee asserts, deserved. ( 103 min ) ^ Top
Sun, May 18, 2008 at 7 PM	HEART OF GLASS DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG GERMANY In the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, an isolated Bavarian village depends for its welfare upon the local glass factory, but when a master glassmaker dies without passing on the formula for the company's celebrated "ruby glass," the town is plunged into privation and despair. The factory owner's son becomes increasingly frenzied trying to recover the formula, while the town prophet foretells tragedy for the villagers and for the German nation in the coming century. To convey the impression of the villagers as "sleepwalkers walking into an unforeseen disaster," Herzog used a cast of thirty-five non-professional actors performing under hypnosis. ( 93 min ) ^ Top
Fri, May 23, 2008 at 7 PM Sat, May 24, 2008 at 9:30 PM	LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG FRANCE/BRITAIN/GERMANY At the age of eighteen, Dieter Dengler traveled from Germany to the United States to enlist in the Navy and become a fighter pilot. Assigned to Vietnam, his plane was shot down on a mission and Dengler himself was captured by the Viet Cong, who tortured him and starved him down to a mere 85 pounds. He managed to escape twice, only to be imprisoned each time by the jungle. Herzog and his crew accompany Dengler back to Southeast Asia to revisit the memories of horrors past, and to recount his courage and resilience. Dengler is one of the few survivors of Vietnam POW camps. ( 80 min ) ^ Top
Fri, May 23, 2008 at 9 PM Sun, May 25, 2008 at 7 PM	STROSZEK DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG GERMANY In Berlin, a motley trio of friends—an old man named Scheitz, an abused prostitute named Eva, and a man named Bruno recently released from jail—decide to relocate to the golden shores of America, because "everybody's rich there." They discover the joys of living on credit, but when the bank repossesses their new mobile home and color television, Eva runs away with a trucker and Bruno and Scheitz resort to robbery. Herzog wrote the script for STROSZEK, which Roger Ebert has called "one of the oddest films ever made," in only four days. ( 115 min ) ^ Top
Sat, May 24, 2008 at 7 PM	RESCUE DAWN DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG US With actors Christian Bale and Steve Zahn in tow, Herzog revisits the story of LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY, with Bale playing German-born Dieter Dengler, who enlists in the American Navy during the Vietnam War to become a fighter pilot. On a top-secret mission, Dieter is shot down, captured by the Viet Cong and imprisoned in a POW camp from which he engineers an escape. Filmed in Thailand and featuring harrowing scenes of starvation and torture (with no apparent stunt doubles used), some critics claim that RESCUE DAWN achieves a higher level of cinematic realism than its documentary predecessor. ( 126 min ) ^ Top
Thu, May 29, 2008 at 7 PM	NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE DIRECTOR: WERNER HERZOG GERMANY/FRANCE In remaking Murnau's 1922 classic, Herzog intended to pay homage to what he has stated is the greatest German film ever made—even returning to the same European locations where the original was filmed. In the process, he created a vampire movie to rival all others. Klaus Kinski, in what many claim is his finest performance, embodies a Dracula without a shred of the suave worldliness commonly associated with the character; this Dracula is gaunt, ugly, and pitiful, an accursed soul yearning for the humanity he will never achieve. Likewise, Herzog's story unfolds with a slow, measured, tragic lyricism that is more disquieting than shocking—a horror film that hypnotizes. ( 124 min ) ^ Top