Werner Herzog follows mountaineers Hans Kammerlander and Reinhold Messner during Read More »
Tag Archives: Werner Herzog
Scream of Stone AKA Cerro Torre: Schrei aus Stein (1991) Werner Herzog, Vittorio Mezzogiorno, Stefan Glowacz, Mathilda May
A meeting of two world famous climbers, one an experienced mountaineer (Roccia) Read More »
Bells from the Deep AKA Glocken aus der Tiefe – Glaube und Aberglaube in Rußland (1993) Werner Herzog, Anna Hitch, Vissarion
What is faith and religion to Russians after the fall of communism? Read More »
Signs of Life (1968) Werner Herzog, Peter Brogle, Wolfgang Reichmann, Athina Zacharopoulou
A wounded German paratrooper named Stroszek is sent to the quiet island of Kos with his wife Nora Read More »
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010) Werner Herzog, Dmitry Vasyukov, Nikolay Nikiforovitch Siniaev, Gennady Soloviev
In the center of the story is the life of the indigenous people of the village Bakhtia at the river Yenisei in the Siberian Taiga. Read More »
Woyzeck (1979) Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann
Everything in town appears calm, placid, lovely. But Woyzeck, a rifleman assigned as an orderly, hears voices Read More »
Wheel of Time (2003) Werner Herzog, The Dalai Lama, Lama Lhundup Woeser, Takna Jigme Sangpo
Documentary film about the largest Buddhist ritual to promote peace and tolerance, held by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Bodh Gaya Read More »
The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner (1974) Werner Herzog, Walter Steiner
A study of the psychology of a champion ski-jumper, whose full-time occupation is carpentry. Read More »
Stroszek (1977) Werner Herzog, Bruno S., Eva Mattes, Clemens Scheitz
Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion Read More »
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) Werner Herzog, Bruno S., Walter Ladengast, Brigitte Mira, Biography, Drama, History
Herzog’s film is based upon the true and mysterious story of Kaspar Hauser, a young man who suddenly appeared in Nuremberg in 1828 Read More »
Invincible (2001) Werner Herzog, Jouko Ahola, Tim Roth, Anna Gourari, Drama, War
The film is based on the true story of Zishe Breitbart, a Jewish blacksmith’s son from Poland who becomes a sensation in Weimar, Berlin as a mythical strongman. Read More »
The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) Werner Herzog, Brad Dourif, Donald Williams, Ellen Baker, Documentary, Sci-Fi
Planet Earth has been decimated, and as mankind searches space for a new planet to inhabit, a race of aliens attempt to make a new home on the now-inhospitable planet abandoned by the human race in director Werner Herzog’s strange sci-fi saga.
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Herz aus Glas / Heart of Glass (1976) Werner Herzog, Josef Bierbichler, Stefan Güttler, Clemens Scheitz, Comedy, Drama
A small village is renowned for its “Ruby Glass” glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.
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Tokyo-Ga (1985) Wim Wenders, Chishû Ryû, Werner Herzog, Yûharu Atsuta, Documentary
Taking a breather from the Paris, Texas shooting, Wim Wenders hopped a plane, camera in hand, to look for the Tokyo enshrined by the late Yasujiro Ozu (whose work Wenders dubs “the sacred treasure of the cinema”). What he found instead, documented in this filmic journal, was an urbanized dislocation not far from the forlorn emptiness he coached out of German and American vistas. Whether abstracting businessmen teeing off atop skyscrapers or the rigorous, artisanal craft of building a wax sandwich display, Wenders scrambles for humanity seeping through neon and steel – a humanity linked, inevitably, to the old Japan of Ozu’s films (rebellious tykes, cherry blossoms, tranquil countrysides). A far less queasy piece of hero-worship than Lightning Over Water, the picture meditates not so much on Ozu the filmmaker than on Ozu the vanishing feeling, motifs and images reconsidered in a modernized Japan circa 1983 (the trains that fill the Japanese master’s pictures with notions of inexorable movement have now become bullet expresses, gliding with smooth, ominous impersonality). Elsewhere, Wenders bumps into Werner Herzog (who bitches about having to space-travel to find pure images nowadays), Chris Marker (whose Sans Soleil would make a superb double-bill with Tokyo-Ga) and two aged Ozu stalwarts, gracious, dignified leading man Chishu Ryu and anecdotal camera operator Yuuharu Atsuta. Wenders’ eulogy for a culture alienating its own roots is built, characteristically, upon cinema’s capacity for regenerative beauty, though his links to Ozu are, if anything, more tenuous than his affinity with Nicholas Ray – Ozu’s images distill life, Wenders’ etherealize it. Cinematography by Edward Lachman.
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Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen / Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) Werner Herzog, Helmut Döring, Paul Glauer, Gisela Hertwig, Comedy, Drama
The inhabitants of an institution in a remote country rebel against their keepers. Their acts of rebellion are by turns humorous, boring and alarming. An allegory on the problematic nature of fully liberating the human spirit, as both commendable and disturbing elements of our nature come forward. The film shows how justifiable revolt may be empowering, but may also turn to chaos and depravity. The allegory is developed in part by the fact that the film is cast entirely with dwarfs.
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