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The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner + How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck
Date & Time: 17/05 7:30pm
‧The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
West Germany /1973 /B&W, Col /DVD /44mins
In German with English Subtitles
An extraordinary portrait of Walter Steiner, the former world champion ski jumper who works as a woodcarver for his full-time occupation. The film shows one of the cardinal themes in Herzog’s works: the yearning for weightlessness, the desire to overcome physical limitations, and the inexorable defeat with crashing. At the start, Herzog uses extreme slow-motion cameras to heighten the illusion of weightless flight; later, he assembles a sequence of horrific crashes when the athletes land. The film captures the breathtaking shots of ski flying, and the excitement and the danger of this extreme sport.
‧How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck
West Germany /1976 /Col /DVD /45mins
In German & English with English Subtitles
A film about what Herzog calls “the poetry of capitalism”. The auctioneers at the 1975 World Championship of Livestock Auctioneers speak at great speed and with outstanding rhythm which is virtually unintelligible to the layperson. Herzog investigates the possibilities and boundaries of human communication, and examines here how language dissolves into figures, cadences, and barely noticeable gestures between purchasers and buyers. The director marvels at the bidders’ skills, but also seems to take a skeptical view of this language. He shoots the religious life of the Amish, which contrasts dramatically with the ritualised language of the cattle auction.
Wings of Hope + To the End - and then a Bit Further - Werner Herzog
Date & Time: 18/05 7:30pm
‧Wings of Hope
Germany, UK /1999 /Col /DVD /66mins
In English & German with English Subtitles
In 1971, an aeroplane crashed into the Peruvian rainforest. Rescue teams abandoned their search after ten days. Twelve days later, Juliane Koepcke, the seventeen-year-old sole survivor of the crash, emerged. Twenty-seven years later, Herzog accompanies her back to the scene of the accident and gives a realistic portrayal of how she survived her journey. Herzog booked the same plane but cancelled the reservation due to a last minute change in itinerary when he was shooting Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Herzog posted a question in the documentary: what is fate, what belongs to the realm of the unavoidable — and how is it still possible to escape it?
‧To the End - and then a Bit Further - Werner Herzog
West Germany /1989 / B&W, Col /DVD /60mins
In German with English Subtitles
A portrait of Werner Herzog compiled of statements from the director and excerpts from his works. The film explores the parallels between the director’s works and his personality, for example, his recollections of the blazing town after an air raid are followed by images of an almighty fire in his film Heart of Glass. Herzog also talks of his skepticism of the ability to capture “reality” on film, the affinity between film and music, and his belief that one of the principle objectives of a film is to establish an image of humanity and use visions to question: “Who are we?”
Lessons of Darkness + La Soufrière
Date & Time: 19/05 2:30pm
‧Lessons of Darkness
France, UK, Germany /1992 /Col /DVD /52mins
In German, English & Arabic with English Subtitles
An apocalyptic vision featuring the oil well fires in Kuwait after the Gulf-War, as the whole world bursts into flames. The film is labelled “science fiction”, as if it could only have been shot in a distant galaxy, as there is not a single shot in which you can recognise our planet. At its premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, the audience accused that Herzog had aestheticised the horror of the war. The director defended, “that’s what Dante did in his Inferno, it’s what Goya did, and Hieronymus Bosch, too.” He called it Ecstatic Truth, a kind of truth that is the enemy of the merely factual.
‧La Soufrière
West Germany /1977 /Col /DVD /30mins
In German with English Subtitles
The film, which its full title is La Soufrière: Waiting for an Unavoidable Catastrophe, is one of Herzog’s “mad genius” works. In 1976, the volcano La Grande Soufrière on the French Caribbean Island Guadeloupe threatens to unleash a devastating eruption. The surrounding areas have been completely evacuated, but one peasant has refused to leave. Werner Herzog and his team immediately set out on a journey to the Caribbean to examine the relationship towards death the peasant had. Through the film Herzog catches the eeriness of an abandoned city and explores life at its most spiritual extreme in an utter disaster.
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Date & Time: 19/05 7:30pm
Germany, UK, France /1997 /Col /DVD /71mins
In English & German with English Subtitles
German pilot Dieter Dengler joined the US Navy and was sent to fight in the Vietnam War. He was shot down over Laos, taken prisoner. After suffered a long period of torture and starvation, he made a remarkable escape. Herzog took him back to Laos and Thailand, hired locals to play the part of the captors, and had him retrace his steps. Dieter’s pilot dream was not influenced by the pursuit of freedom above the clouds, but by a traumatising experience seeing the American aircrafts bombed his neighbourhood. Herzog captures the will to live and the will to death inside this hero, and directed a feature film based on the actual events called Rescue Dawn in 2007.
The White Diamond
Date & Time: 20/05 2:30pm
Germany, Japan, UK /2004 /Col /DVD /88mins
In English & German with English Subtitles
The film depicts the struggles and the enthusiasm of Graham Dorrington, an aeronautical engineer who has built a small airship to explore the flora and fauna of the forest canopy. Twelve years ago, a similar expedition ended in disaster when his friend fell and died from an airship built by him while trying to film the forest. Herzog’s interest lies with the people who seek to fly despite the danger of crashing and who obsessively revolt against the laws of nature. The film also explores the giant Kaieteur Falls in the heart of Guyan — the lost world of the pristine rain forest of this little explored area of the world.
The Wild Blue Yonder
Date & Time: 20/05 5:30pm
Germany, France, Austria, UK /2005 /Col /DVD /78mins
In English with English Subtitles
Herzog defines it as “science fiction fantasy”, a strange documentary-style saga of an alien starring Brad Dourif, telling about his home planet — the Wild Blue Yonder — where the atmosphere is composed of liquid helium and the sky frozen. The film comprises footages of a NASA space shuttle mission that the filmmaker found it by chance in an old warehouse in Los Angeles, and the underwater expedition in Antarctica, representing the bizarre and beautiful distant planet. The talkative, disappointed, and furious alien embodies the ultimate image of the Herzogian character: the outsider, the foreign being, the last survivor of his kind.
Land of Silence and Darkness
Date & Time: 20/05 7:30pm
West Germany /1971 /Col /DVD /82mins
In German with English Subtitles
Regarded as one of Herzog’s most tender and insightful films, Land of Silence and Darkness is a documentary that revolves around the deaf-blind elderly lady, Fini Straubinger, who has dedicated her life to helping others suffering from the same affliction. Fini once speaks in the film, “When you let my hand go, it is as if we were a thousand miles away from each other.” Herzog reviews it as a film about solitude, human dignity, and the terrifying difficulties of being understood by others. The final shot with a deaf-blind man who explores a tree with his hands evokes best the sense of sensitivity presented in the film.
Public Seminar:“Scripting” the Truth: On Werner Herzog’s Documentary Films
Date & Time: 19/05 4:30pm
Venue: Goethe-Gallery, Goethe-Institut Hongkong, 14/F Hong Kong Arts Centre
Free admission. Limited seats available. First-come-first-served.
Speaker: Dr. Chris Wahl (Film Scholar), Mr. Jimmy Choi (Film & Documentary Educator & Practitioner)
Conducted in English
In collaboration with: Goethe-Institut Hongkong
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