Werner Herzog Retrospective: Get the ultimate education on one of documentary's greatest auteurs.
For nearly five years, Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete Fitzcarraldo (screening here Thursday, August 11), one of the most ambitious and legendary films of his career. Here, expert documentarian Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production with his usual fearlessness and ability to coax honest responses from his subjects. The stuff of movie legend, Fitzcarraldo’s production was riddled with misfortune—not unrelated to Herzog’s single-minded devotion to making the film without compromise—including the loss of a leading man halfway through filming, a 1,200-mile relocation, attacks from local Indigenous groups, plane crashes and disease. The effort was made even more perilous by Herzog’s determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence that required hundreds of people to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is one of the world’s most astonishing documents of the filmmaking process.
In Spanish, English and German with English subtitles.
Catch four films in the Herzog retrospective for only $40 (Members: $28, $20, Free) with our package deal.