Like any great German, Herzog (German Werner Herzog) does not like to brag about his biography and personal achievements, because he is afraid of unnecessary associations with narcissistic Teutonic “messiahs” of past eras. His deeds and work speak much more eloquently. French film director Francois Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important director of the generation." American film critic Roger Ebert once said that Herzog “never made a single film that was compromised, disgraced, made for pragmatic reasons or uninteresting. His creative failures are as impressive as successful films. ” He was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine in 2009.
The complete filmography of Werner Herzog contains both documentary films and historical films and a condo arthouse. He has become famous for historical films such as Aguirre - The Wrath of God, starring Klaus Kinsky, informative documentaries such as The Echo of the Black Empire, narrating about Jean-Bedel Bokass, the dictator and emperor of Central Africa, and absurd arthouse paintings like Fitzcarraldo " Each film fan will find in the filmography of this German film director his own taste.
Werner Herzog: biography
The future director was born under the name Werner Stipetić in Munich, in the family of Elizabeth Stipetić, an Austrian of Croatian descent, and Dietrich Herzog, who was German. When Werner was two weeks old, his mother took refuge in the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang (in the Chimgau Alps), after the house next to them was destroyed during the bombing during World War II. In Sachranga, Herzog grew up in an uncomfortable house, in which there was not even a water supply. He had never seen films, and did not even know about the existence of a movie, until a traveling projectionist visited his school in Sachrang. When the Duke turned 12, he and his family returned to Munich. His father left the family long before that. Werner later adopted his father's last name, Herzog, (“duke” in German), which, in his opinion, was better suited for the director.
Heavy youth
In the same year, Herzog was invited to sing in a school choir, and he categorically refused, as a result of which he was almost expelled. Until he was eighteen years old, Herzog did not listen to music, did not sing any songs and did not play instruments. He later said that he would easily give up 10 years of his life for his ability to play the cello.
At an early age, he experienced a dramatic stage, which lasted several years, under the influence of the experience he converted to Catholicism. Herzog began to make long trips, some on foot. Around the same time, he realized that he wanted to become a filmmaker, and began to study the basics of film production in several pages in the encyclopedia, after which he stole a 35-mm camera from the Munich film school and began to create. In a commentary on the film Aguirre, God's Wrath, he says: “I do not consider this a theft. It was just a necessity. I had some kind of natural right to the camera as a tool for work. ”
Years of teachings and torment
He received a scholarship from the University of Duknes, but he lived at the same time in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During the last years of study, not a single production company was ready to take over his projects, so Herzog worked night shifts as a welder in a steel mill to earn money for his first creations. After graduating from high school, he was intrigued by the mysterious country of Congo, which had just gained independence, and decided to go there, but only reached the south of Sudan, where he became seriously ill.
Carier start
Werner Herzog, together with Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlendorf, led the movement of the new German cinema outside of Germany. The West German directorial community consisted of yesterday's documentary filmmakers who filmed low-budget films and were influenced by the French New Wave.
In addition to using professional actors - German, American and others - Herzog is known for using people from the area in which he takes pictures.
First awards
As a result, Werner Herzog's films were nominated and received many awards. His first major award was the Silver Bear, an extraordinary jury award for the film Signs of Life (The Nosferatu Vampire was nominated for the Golden Bear in 1979).
In 1987, Herzog and his stepbrother Lucky Stipiti won the Bavarian Movie Award for Best Production for the film Cobra Verde. In 2002, he won the Dragon Dragon honorary award during the Krakow Film Festival.
Conflict with Ebert
In 1999, before a public dialogue with critic Roger Ebert at the Walker Art Center, Herzog read a new manifesto, which he called the Minnesota Declaration: Truth and Fact in Documentary Films. The subtitle of the declaration began with the preamble: "Modern cinema is devoid of faith, it reaches just the superficial truth, the truth of accountants." Ebert later wrote about this: "For the first time, he fully explained his theory of" ecstatic truth. " In 2017, Herzog wrote an addendum to the manifesto, prompted by the question of "truth in an era of alternative facts."
Further way
Werner Herzog was greeted with a standing ovation at the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, receiving an award as Best Director of 2006. Four of his films were screened at the San Francisco International Film Festival over the years: Woodabe - Shepherds of the Sun in 1990, Bells of the Abyss in 1993, Lessons of Darkness in 1993 and The Wild Blue Yonder in 2006 year. In April 2007, Herzog appeared at Ebertfest in Champaign, Illinois, where he received the Golden Strike award and an engraved glockenspiel presented to him by a young director inspired by his films. Later, German film director Werner Herzog received the Alfred P. Sloan Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
In 2009, Herzog became the only director in recent history, who in one year took part in two competitions at the same time at the prestigious Venice Film Festival.
Own film school
Unhappy with the way film schools work, Herzog founded his own school in 2009. Her program is a four-day workshop with Herzog, which takes place annually (the last of them was held in March 2016 in Munich). Courses include hiking skills, the art of admiration, the skill of experiencing setbacks, failure, the sports side of filmmaking, creating your own shooting permits, neutralizing bureaucracy, guerrilla tactics, and self-confidence. Speaking to students, Herzog once said: “I prefer people who worked as bouncers at a sex club, or who were overseers in a madhouse. You must live life in the most elementary forms. Costa Ricans have a very nice word: pura-vida. This is not just a purity of life, but a raw, unconditional quality of life. And that’s what makes young people go to filmmakers, not professors or academics. ”
Activities in the 2010s
Herzog was president of the jury at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival in 2010.
In the same year, he completed a documentary called “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”, which tells about his trip to the Chauvet cave in France. Although he was skeptical of the 3-D film as a format, he presented his new film at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival in a three-dimensional format. Also in 2010, Herzog, together with Dimitry Vasuikov, shot Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, which depicts the life of hunters in the Siberian taiga.
For the first time in 2010, Werner Herzog voiced an animated television program, appearing in The Bundox, as well as in the first episode of the third season of the series “This is the Black President,” by Huey Freeman. He played a fictionalized version of himself, filming a documentary about various marginals and their actions during the 2008 election, when Barack Obama won.
Creative experiments
Continuing to work on the dubbing, Herzog played Walter Khotenhoffer (formerly known as August Glop) in the episode of The Simpsons Scorpio Tale, which aired in March 2011. The following year, he also appeared in an episode of episode 8 of American Dad!, Voicing a minor character in an episode of Adult Swim Metalocalypse. In 2015, he voiced a similar character, already in the animated series "Rick and Morty," in the episode Adult Swim.
Herzog again drew attention to his person in 2013 when he released a 35-minute documentary on public service ads, starting with One Second to Next, demonstrating the dangers of typing while driving. The film, which describes four stories where text messaging while driving led to tragedy or death, quickly collected over 1.7 million views on YouTube and was subsequently distributed to over 40,000 high schools. In July 2013, Herzog contributed to an art installation called Hearsay of the Soul for the Whitney Biennale, which was later acquired as a permanent exhibition by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. At the end of 2013, he also participated in the English-language dubbing of the full-length anime The Wind Rises by Hayao Miyazaki.
In 2011, Herzog competed with Ridley Scott for the right to make a film based on the life of researcher Gertrude Bell. In 2012, it was confirmed that Herzog will begin production on its long-term project in March 2013 in Morocco. The film originally involved Naomi Watts, who was supposed to play Gertrude Bell, Robert Pattinson, who was to play T.E. Lawrence and Jude Law, who was accepted for the role of Henry Cadogan. The film was completed in 2014 with a slightly different cast: Gertrude Bell was played by Nicole Kidman, and Cardogan by James Franco. The personal life of Werner Herzog, with all his publicity, is not too widely advertised. It is known that he was married three times, he has a daughter. He is currently married to Lena Herzog, an American of Russian descent. She is engaged in art photography and documentary.
In 2015, Herzog made the feature film Salt and Fire in Bolivia. Starring Veronica Ferres, Michael Shannon and Gael Garcia Bernal. He is described as "an explosive drama inspired by the story of Tom Bissell."
In 2016, the Duke launched an online workshop called “Werner Herzog, who teaches cinema,” where he spoke in detail about his craft.
Director style
Herzog's films have received significant recognition from both critics and viewers, and many of them have become classics of the art house. Noteworthy is the Fitzcarraldo project, in which the director’s obsession and obsession are written off by the director from himself. The Burden of Dreams, a documentary filmed during the creation of Fitzcarraldo, examined Herzog’s efforts to shoot the film in harsh conditions. Herzog's diaries during the creation of Fitzcarraldo were published under the heading "Conquering the Worthless: Reflections on the Creation of Fitzcarraldo." Mark Harris of The New York Times wrote in his review: “The film and its creation are fables about a silly obsession, exploring the blurred line between dream and madness.” The filmography of Werner Herzog is full of similar semi-autobiographical paintings.
His vision of the world was described as “Wagnerian” in scale. The plot of Fitzcarraldo revolves around the building of the opera house, and Herzog's later film, Invincible (2001), affects Siegfried's personality. He prides himself on never using storyboards and often improvising, taking off significant amounts of material spontaneously.