Film
“Serious Games”: Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness (Lektionen in Finsternis) (1992)

Sat, 09/07/2019
National Gallery of Art

Various cinematic genres and movements over the years have laid claim to truth in cinema — the actualités of the Lumière brothers, Kino-Pravda espoused by Dziga Vertov, the “ethnofiction” anthropological films of Jean Rouch, and the “ecstatic truth” of Werner Herzog’s documentaries are but a few examples. Although the documentary is still a viable cinematic genre, many filmmakers have now expanded the range of their practice to create works that cross between art and anthropology, documentary and fiction, education and entertainment, and galleries and movie theaters.

Serious Games: Documentary Art between Fact and Fiction explores a cross section of documentary practice by German filmmakers and artists focusing on the subject of war and conflict. Blurring the boundaries between fact and fiction, these works also demonstrate the fluidity of exhibition practice between the black box of the cinema and the white cube of the gallery. Presented in association with the National Gallery of Art, with special thanks to Zach Feldman for organizing the program.

Lessons of Darkness (Lektionen in Finsternis)
Germany, 1992, 54 min., Director: Werner Herzog

Lessons of Darkness presents the burning oil fields of Kuwait as an alien landscape scarred by the Gulf War. Ostensibly a documentary about the firefighters tasked with extinguishing the burning wells, Werner Herzog’s film bends these realities into a nihilistic narrative by emphasizing the relentlessness and even futility of their work. The subdued voice-over, characteristic of Herzog’s films, serves to distance the viewer from the media-saturated environment of the war while challenging familiar documentary conventions in favor of poetic and philosophical meditation.

Werner Herzog was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria and studied History and German Literature in Munich and Pittsburgh. He made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature- and documentary films, such as Aguirre der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 1972), Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht (Nosferatu, 1978), Fitzcarraldo (1982), Lektionen in Finsternis (Lessons of Darkness, 1992), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), Mein liebster Feind (My Best Fiend, 1999), Invincible (2000), Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), and Die Höhle der vergessenen Träume (Cave of Forgotten Dreams, 2010). Herzog has published more than a dozen books of prose, and directed as many operas. Werner Herzog lives in Munich and Los Angeles.

More information on seating is available on the website of the National Gallery of Art Film Programs (see link at right).