German film director, screenwriter, author, actor and opera director
Werner Herzog celebrated his
80th birthday on
September 5, 2022. His work has had a decisive influence on New German Cinema and makes him an important representative of international auteur filmmaking. To mark the occasion, we are screening five films from his rich oeuvre.
Werner Herzog (born 1942 in Munich as Werner Stipetić) is considered to be one of the leading exponents of post-war West German cinema and is particularly known for his obscure scenes and improvisation on set.
© Werner Herzog Film
Along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Volker Schlöndorff and Wim Wenders, Herzog is part of the first generation of New German Cinema. After the “Oberhausen Manifesto” of 1962, in which young filmmakers renounced commercial and conservative cinema of the post-war period in the Federal Republic of Germany, these auteurs created films using very limited economic means, learning to extract both the greatest possible authenticity and the greatest possible aesthetic effect from their sets (which couldn’t cost anything) and actors (often amateurs or young inexperienced actors).
The screeninigs will be accompanied by a talk and Q&A by Bangalore's well known film critic and expert
MK Raghavendra with the Title
Werner Herzog: Civilisation and the 'Primitive'.
MK Raghavendra is a writer on culture, literature and politics, specializing in film, particularly its political side. He won the National Award, the Swarna Kamal for Best Film Critic in 1997, and received a Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 2000. Since then he has authored several volumes of academic film scholarship from international publishers such as Oxford University Press, Bloomsbury and Routledge.
All films will be screened at the
Bhavan as well as at the
Suchitra Cine Academy. Entry free! All are welcome.
© Werner Herzog Film
AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD (1972, 100 min.)
Herzog depicts colossal failure in this delusional legend of conquest about a Spanish expedition that fights its way through the jungle of Peru in 1560. In search of the legendary golden city of El Dorado, doom draws ever closer the further the troop advances.
© Werner Herzog Film
FITZCARRALDO (1982, 158 min.)
Fitzcarraldo is a fantasist who seeks to realise his bold dream of an opera in the jungle. Herzog’s epic film became famous above all for the ship being pushed over a mountain, opera arias echoing through the jungle and numerous legends surrounding the film’s production.
© Werner Herzog Film
LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS (1971, 85 min.)
Herzog’s sensitive documentary film approaches the lives of deafblind people, whose perceptive abilities require a unique relationship to their environment. It reveals a basic human need to perceive the outside world and to see oneself as part of it.
© Werner Herzog Film
LESSONS OF DARKNESS (1992, 54 min.)
Shortly before the end of the Second Gulf War, Iraqi troops set fire to oil fields as they retreated from Kuwait. Herzog and his cinematographer sought to capture the incomprehensible, the apocalypse, with cinematic means and to show what was left behind.
© Werner Herzog Film
NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979, 124 min.)
Based on Bram Stoker’s horror novel DRACULA (1897) and its famous silent film version NOSFERATU (F.W. Murnau, 1921), Herzog retells the frequently adapted vampire story by linking the imagery of the German classic and his own visual cosmos.
Schedule at Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan
Friday 18.11.2022
4:00 p.m. Land of Silence and Darkness
5:30 p.m. Break
6:00 p.m. Werner Herzog: Civilisation and the 'Primitive' by MK Raghavendra + Q&A
7:15 p.m. Lessons of Darkness
Saturday 19.11.2022
3:00 p.m. Nosferatu the Vampyre
5:15 p.m. Aguirre – The Wrath of God
7:00 p.m. Fitzcarraldo
Schedule at Suchitra Cine Academy
Saturday 26.11.2022
4:00 p.m. Land of Silence and Darkness (1971, 85 min.)
5:30 p.m. Lessons of Darkness (1992, 54 min.)
6:30 p.m. Fitzcarraldo (1982, 158 min.)
Sunday 27.11.2022
4:00 p.m. Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979, 124 min.)
6:30 p.m. Werner Herzog: Civilisation and the 'Primitive' by MK Raghavendra + Q&A
7:30pm Aguirre – The Wrath of God (1972, 100 min.)
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