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Click here to see photos of Werner Herzog in person at the opening weekend of HERZOG (NON)FICTION “Film Forum, which has been showcasing Herzog for decades, casts a wide net, augmenting his best-known documentaries with some that are virtually unknown.” – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice. Click here to read review Click here to read Bruce Bennett’s interview with Herzog in  “Much-anticipated, exquisitely programmed!” – S.T. VanAirsdale, The Reeler “Herzog’s prolific nonfiction excursions illustrate the potential of a restless imagination... the director’s calculated filtration of reality carries unhindered lyricism that makes the chic political diatribes that often fill theaters look like infantile tantrums. A stunning encapsulation of this begins May 18 at Film Forum, when a nearly comprehensive retrospective of Herzog’s documentaries unfurls.” – Eric Kohn, New York Press. Click here to read entire review and interview with Werner Herzog “Germany’s Werner Herzog has reinvented himself as a sensitive (if still Teutonic-toned) chronicler of real-life strangeness. His recent documentaries get an unspooling—along with several of the director's personal faves.” – Time Out New York IN ASSOCIATION WITH MAGNUM PHOTOS & GOETHE-INSTITUT, NEW YORK EXCLUSIVE MEDIA SPONSOR - THE VILLAGE VOICE PROGRAMMED BY GABRIELE CAROTI  “A tasty sidebar!” - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
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MAY 18/19 FRI/SAT (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION)
LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY 1:00, 4:00, 7:00*, 10:00 “Recently dramatized by Herzog himself as the forthcoming Rescue Dawn, this intensely gripping survival story about a downed German-American pilot who escaped Vietnam by sheer dint of positivity is not to be missed!” WINGS OF HOPE (1999) 28 years later, Juliane Koepcke recreates her twelveday odyssey out of the Peruvian jungle as the 17-year-old sole survivor of a 92-person plane crash—a flight Herzog himself had originally been scheduled to take while shooting Aguirre. MAY 20 SUN (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION) (2004) Maiden flight of a helium-filled, teardrop-shaped balloon
over the Amazon canopy in Guyana — 12 years after the fatalaccident
flight of its predecessor. Breathtaking views of the jungle canopy; and eccentric characters, including balloonist Dr. Graham Dorrington and a rooster-loving Rasta. 2:45, 6:25, 10:05 Note: TEN THOUSAND YEARS OLDER will be playing on Thursday, May 24 at 8:00 PM (with JAG MANDIR) “An absorbing portrait!” – Time Out New York THE GREAT ECSTASY OF WOODCARVER STEINER 1:00, 4:40, 8:20* “A sublimely beautiful film that turns physics, fatalism, and fiberglass into something ephemerally but powerfully spiritual. It's as if Carl Dreyer were behind the camera for a segment of ABC’s old ‘Wide World of Sports’ show.”
MAY 21 MON
(1983, CHRIS MARKER) An image of three happy children on a
windy day in Iceland links up with women at a cat memorial in
Japan; Hitchcock’s Vertigo re-created on the Bay Area
locations where it was shot; an exchange of glances at a
market in Guinea-Bissau; the connections and juxtapositions
are extreme, but seemingly effortless. "One of the key non-fiction films of our time... it registers like a poem one might find in a time capsule.” – Jonathan Rosenbaum. Plus LES MAÎTRES
FOUS (1955): “Jean Rouch’s seminal ethnographic short
about the Hauka of West Africa, whose violent trance rituals
imitate and mock British colonialism.” – Rosenbaum. 2:00, 4:30, 7:00*, 9:30 “Like a visual poem written by the coolest friend you have. Not to be missed, it screens with Jean Rouch's 1955 short The Mad Masters, about an African cult ritual. (Totally up Werner's alley.)” MAY 22 TUE (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION) (1995) Cuckoo portrait of Carlo Gesualdo, 16th Century nobleman, composer, and murderer, includes interviews with the people of Venosa about their favorite son; dramatic reenactments of colorful legends; and sometimes out of tune performances of his beautiful, but notoriously difficult, madrigals. 1:00, 4:00, 7:00, 10:00 “This is the documentary that really runs amok. One of the films closest to my heart.” – Herzog. THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE WORLD INTO MUSIC (1994) In Bayreuth for his latest production of a Wagner opera, Herzog films himself as he comically banters with costume designer Kenji Yamamoto and works with architects and singers. The ultimate in self-referential documentaries. 2:15, 5:15, 8:15 MAY 23/24 WED/THU (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION) (1979, CHRISTIAN WEISENBORN AND ERWIN KEUSCH) “None of my films is cinema vérité. It’s only the simplest form of truth.” Herzog recalls youthful travels in Africa, “with rats nibbling my elbow”; opines on filmmaking: “humiliations are an essential part in making films;” and on working with actor Klaus Kinski: “temperamentally, he’s inclined to hysteria.” With clips from his features and documentaries from the 60s and 70s. WED 1:00, 4:20, 7:40 THE BALL IS A SCUMBAG (2000, CHRISTIAN WEISENBORN AND RUDOLPH HERZOG) “Sometimes the ball is bewitched,” beefs legendary soccer coach (of teams in 38 countries, including 6 in Germany alone) Rudi Gutendorf to pal Herzog. Plus PORTRAIT WERNER HERZOG (1986): Herzog profiles...himself! WED 2:50, 6:10, 9:30 MAY 24 THU (SEPARATE ADMISSION) (1991) A day-long one-show-only celebration of the Indian Maharajah of Udaipur, a private theater with thousands of musicians and performers. Plus PILGRIMAGE (2001): Pilgrimages to the Virgin of Guadalupe, to the tomb of Saint Sergei in Zagorsk, Russia, and other shrines, focusing on the spirituality, fervor and suffering of the travelers. And TEN THOUSAND YEARS OLDER (2001): first encounter of an Amazon tribe in 1982, and what they’re like now. 8:00 ONLY MAY 25 FRI (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION) (1989) Primping and parading before the opposite sex: just another beauty pageant — except this time it’s the men doing it — for a nomadic tribe in the Sahara that consider themselves the most beautiful people on earth. 3:20, 6:20, 9:20 “Herzog discovers a reality more exotic and mysterious ECHOES FROM A SOMBER EMPIRE (1990) In the Central African Republic, journalist Michael Goldsmith (a former prisoner and torturee) questions a wife and some of the 50 odd children of ex-“emperor” (self-proclaimed) Jean-Bédel Bokassa, and tours his former HQ, with archive footage of the blood-soaked 13-year reign intercut. (Herzog himself was briefly Bokassa’s prisoner.) 1:30, 4:30, 7:30 “Transforms Bokassa’s madness into mesmerizing visions.” – Janet Maslin, The New York Times MAY 26 SAT HOW MUCH WOOD. . . (1976): Deep in Pennsylvania Amish country, it’s a fast-talker’s Duel of the Titans as cattle auctioneers from around the country go for their championship, their nonstop dizzying spiels spiralling into “one of the most eccentric concert films of all time” (Christopher Long). BALLAD OF THE LITTLE SOLDIER (1984, Herzog and Denis Reichle): Pre-pubescent Nicaraguan Contras recount their experiences fighting on the front lines. Plus LAST WORDS (1967): a Greek islander withdrawing from life. 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30 “Among the best work he’s ever done... Mr. Herzog is scaling
the peaks of his own, very personal cinema.” MAY 27 SUN BELLS FROM THE DEEP (1993): Faith, superstition and mysticism in Russia: a “grand sorcerer” who attempts a mass exorcism; tribes who croak like frogs to achieve meditation; devotees who crawl onto a frozen lake to view a lost city at its bottom (Herzog admitted he hired local winos to play the pilgrims), viewed without comment. CHRIST AND DEMONS IN NEW SPAIN (1999): the conquest of Latin America by the Catholic Church and the consequences of it for today’s religious life in that region. 1:45, 3:40, 5:35, 7:30, 9:25 MAY 28 MON (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION)
(2004, HUBERT SAUPER) “But economically, it’s good.” As the Nile Perch, introduced into Lake Victoria, Tanzania, in the 60s, gobble up almost all the native species, a fish for guns trade ensues — but what do the locals get out of it? 3:10, 7:25 “An uncompromising portrait...Unmissable” – Time Out New York (1995, ULRICH SEIDL) Austrian urban alienation and angst — but why stop there? — in unblinking look at nothing-in-my-life-but-Fido Viennese and their bizarre pet relationships. 1:00, 5:15, 9:30 “I have never looked so directly into hell in the cinema.” – Herzog. MAY 29 TUE (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION)
“For those Herzog fans who have only one day to check out this subseries at Film Forum, it must be Tuesday, when two of the finest, most enigmatic documentaries ever made will be shown back-to-back. Gates of Heaven and Vernon, Florida are perfect compliments for the festival, because they have the same aura of the passionate and the macabre that underscore Mr. Herzog's visions.” (1978, ERROL MORRIS) California pet cemeteries and those who use them: the bereft pet lovers; the renderer; the marketing whiz who avoids negative words, even when talking to his little daughter — bizarre, hilarious, and riveting. The source for Herzog eating his shoe (see Sun. June 3). 2:10, 5:00, 7:50 “Somehow simultaneously touching and vaguely disturbing.” – Time Out New York (1981, ERROL MORRIS) “You ever seen a man’s brains?” A preacher sermonizes on the meanings of “therefore”; a hunter gives inside tips on tracking down turkey gobblers; and a geezer who catches and keeps wild animals: the oddball residents of a Florida swamp town have their say. 1:00, 3:50, 6:40, 9:30 “The greatest film ever
made.” – Herzog MAY 30/31 WED/THU
(both 1980) HUIE’S SERMON: A black preacher’s Sunday sermon in a Brooklyn church escalates to an ecstatic climax which brings the entire church to its feet. GOD’S ANGRY MAN: Dr. Gene Scott, a thickly sideburned three-piece-suited televangelist preacher — and onetime NYC late-night regular — collects several hundred thousand dollars within 30 minutes, but never mentions faith. Plus PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FANATICS (1969). WED 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30 “Imagine Travis Bickle with his own late night talk show.” – Paul Arthur, Film Comment MAY 31 THU THE FLYING DOCTORS OF EAST AFRICA (1969): Western physicians bring humanitarian aid and medical relief by airplane to poor villages in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. HANDICAPPED FUTURE (1971): Herzog explores how treatment of disabled children in Germany and the US differ. NO ONE WILL PLAY WITH ME (1976): A preschooler is odd kid out until a classmate meets his talking (!) pet raven. THE UNPRECEDENTED DEFENCE OF FORTRESS DEUTSCHKREUZ (1966): four men slowly go crazy as they guard an abandoned castle in Austria from an imaginary attacking army. 8:00 ONLY JUNE 1 FRI (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION) FATA MORGANA (1970) Literally, a mirage, and Herzog films plenty in this plotless
but utterly hypnotic view of the Sahara. “Extraordinary...Three
sections: an unpeopled, beautiful wasteland; signs of human
wreckage; and the third showing wretched vestiges of life. Totally
imaginative.” – David Thomson. 2:25, 5:05, 7:45 “This remarkable experimental work, shot in the Sahara, makes the desert look even more like science fiction than the scenes in Star Wars that are set in Tatooine.” LESSONS OF DARKNESS (1992) The Fires of Kuwait, as Herzog’s camera alternately joins fire fighters attacking wellhead flames or floats above the devastation, like an alien floating above “a strange planet on which only bacteria, scorpions, and cockroaches can survive.” 1:20, 4:00, 6:40, 9:20 “Horrific and awe-inspiring, Werner Herzog's 52-minute documentary offers a travelogue of hell: White-hot skies, black seas of bubbling pitch, flaming lakes. This powerful vision could've been made to illustrate the Book of Revelations; the catastrophic landscape it depicts is the Kuwaiti desert after the Gulf War. Meditating on the perverse grandeur of a manmade apocalypse, Herzog is totally in his element. Lessons of Darkness is the culmination of the filmmaker's romantic Doomsday worldview.” JUNE 2 SAT LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS(1971): What’s it like to be blind and deaf? Unknowable, but in Herzog’s first feature documentary, he focuses in on a middle-aged woman who tries to reach out to those similarly afflicted. “Of all of my films, this is the one I want to be available to audiences the most.” – WH. Plus LA SOUFRIÈRE (1977): Herzog and crew head off to a Caribbean volcano about to erupt. Only trouble is, if it does, there ain’t no film. “Herzog’s maddest project... remains a disturbing, even intimidating, meditation on the apocalypse and a frighteningly vivid display of man’s love of death.” – Dave Kehr. 2:30, 5:00, 7:15, 9:30 JUNE 3 SUN (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION)
(1982, LES BLANK) Cast members drop like flies, a prop ship is trapped in rapids, director makes impossible demands: riveting account of crazed — even for Herzog — shooting of Fitzcarraldo. “Suggests Herzog’s own documentaries about visionaries...at once funny and... somewhat frightening.” – Dave Kehr. Plus Blank’s WERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE (1979): the director consumes footwear after losing a bet that Errol Morris’s Gates of Heaven would never be finished. (see May 29, above). 3:10, 7:00 “A far stronger movie than Herzog’s in part because it has Herzog himself as the real life madman who wants to drag a steamboat over a mountain and bring opera to the Amazon.” “One of the most wrenching depictions of grand folly ever captured on film!” (both 1971, LES BLANK) SPEND IT ALL: Lives and music of the Louisiana Cajuns, with a local’s self-tooth-extraction a memorable highlight. In A WELL SPENT LIFE, septugenarian Mance Lipscomb, legendary blues guitarist, looks back on a 60-year marriage and Texas sharecropping. Kurt Vonnegut’s favorite movie. 1:30, 5:20, 9:10 JUNE 4 MON
(1987, KAZUO HARA) Senior citizen wrestling matches ensue as car mechanic/convicted murderer (14 years for killing a real-estate broker) Kenzo Okuzaki won’t take no for an answer as he relentlessly pursues the truth about the intra-regimental murders in his WWII unit. So controversial in Japan no major distributor would touch it. “Stands as one of the most harrowing, astonishing documentaries about war ever thrown onto celluloid.” – Ed Halter, Village Voice. 2:00, 4:20, 6:40, 9:00 “As bold, aggressive, and provocative a film as one would expect from Mr. Herzog.” JUNE 5 TUE (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION) (2003) Buddhist monks trek on foot (for some, more than
3,000 miles) to Bodh Gaya, India, for an initiation ceremony; (Herzog himself claimed to have once walked from Munich to Paris)
with interviews with the Dalai Lama. 3:35, 7:45 “A model of clear-eyed observation, rare among depictions of faith. Watching the director pick out the details of the most devoted travelers, journeying hundreds of miles of rocky Himalayan terrain, you can palably sense the maker of Fitzcarraldo.” – Time Out New York THE WILD BLUE YONDER (2005) The secret Roswell object re-examined, with extraterrestrial Brad Dourif as host and narrator — bizarre (even for Herzog) combo of acted sequences and re-purposed archive footage of NASA flights and below-Antarctic-ice adventures. “A must-see for those who suspect (as I do) that he’s one of the greatest talents now working in this medium.” – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon. 2:00, 5:10, 9:20 JUNE 6/7 WED/THU (ALL FOR 1 ADMISSION)
(1999) “Kinski’s sensitivity is exaggerated, inconceivable
to us.” – Herzog. “Now I absolutely despise the murderer
Herzog.” – Kinski. Back on the Peruvian jungle locations
where he shot Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Herzog reminisces
about the death threats he exchanged there with wild man actor
Klaus Kinski, and the love/hate relationship they shared
through five films (Aguirre, Nosferatu, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo,
Cobra Verde), with numerous film clips showing the often electrifying
results. 3:40, 7:30 GRIZZLY MAN (2005) “I will die for these animals...” Bear-lover Timothy Treadwell frolics with furry behemoths in the Alaskan wilderness, gives them pet names, stares into his camera ranting about the National Parks Service, chases a hatstealing fox, prays for rain to a “Hindu floaty thing,” all seen through his own tapes, re-edited and commented upon by Herzog. 1:40, 5:30, 9:20 "A fascinating, strangely touching cry in the dark." - Time Out New York |
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| SPECIAL THANKS TO Lucki Stipetic, Irma Strehle (Werner Herzog Film, Munich); Gemma Barnett, Song Chong, Shoka Javadiangilani, (Magnum Photos); Juliane Wanckel, Stefan Huesgen (Goethe-institut, New York); Rebeca Conget (New Yorker Films); Les Blank; Peter Langs (Hemispheric Pictures); Ann Petrone (Fourth Floor Films); Mark Boxer (IFC Films); Joanna Fang, Steve Rothenberg (Lionsgate); Wendy Lidell, Rick Hale (International Film Circuit); Tetsuki Ijichi (Tidepoint Pictures); Delphine Selles (French Cultural Services, New York); Josh Siegel (Museum of Modern Art); and Ben Simington (Zeitgeist Films). | ||||||||
(1997) “It all looked strange, like a barbaric dream.” His
village destroyed by American planes in WWII, Dieter Dengler
flew through Vietnam; shot down, he endured a gruelling trek
from captivity — which he re-enacts for Herzog. Basis for
Herzog’s latest feature, Rescue Dawn. “Inspiring, charming,
sad and all but tragic, in a Greek-literary sense — and a
character who might have sprung from the brow of Herzog, if not
Zeus.” – John Anderson, Newsday. 
THE WHITE DIAMOND
“This is the point where ski-flying starts to be inhuman.” WOODCARVER STEINER (1973): Swiss woodcarver Walter
Steiner rewrites the record book of ski-flying even as #1 fan
Herzog plays dueling microphones with ABC Sports — then
attains transcendence in super slo-mo close-ups of
unbelievable flights, underscored by Popol Vuh. “Beautiful, moving, and exhilarating.” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times. DARK GLOW
OF THE MOUNTAINS (1984): The first to climb Everest
without oxygen or support, legendary mountaineer Reinhold
Messner not only climbed
for the hell of it — he
carried along a Super-
8 camera as well. Obviously another Herzog blood brother.
DEATH FOR FIVE VOICES
I AM MY FILMS
JAG MANDIR
WODAABE – HERDSMEN OF THE SUN
HOW MUCH WOOD WOULD A WOODCHUCK
CHUCK? 
BELLS FROM THE DEEP 
DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE
VERNON, FLORIDA
HUIE’S SERMON 
RARE EARLY SHORTS
LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS
BURDEN OF DREAMS 
THE EMPEROR’S NAKED ARMY
MARCHES ON
