Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan is organising a thought-provoking film programme based on the documentaries of the inspired German film maker, Werner Herzog till June 11. The programme was curated and introduced by M K Raghavendra, Bangalore’s well-known film critic and cinephile.Werner Herzog Stipetic (born on September 5, 1942), known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director. He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlondorff, Werner Schroter, and Wim Wenders. His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature. French filmmaker Francois Truffaut once called Herzog the most important film director alive.Besides using movie stars, German, American and otherwise, Herzog is known for using people from the locality in which he is shooting. Especially in his documentaries, he uses locals to benefit his, as he calls it, ‘ecstatic truth’, using footage of them both playing parts and being themselves. He was won several awards for his work and contributions towards cinema.Land of Silence and DarknessLand of Silence and Darkness (Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit) is a 1971 documentary film by German director Werner Herzog. In telling the story of Fini Straubinger a deaf-blind German woman, Herzog investigates the nature of human thought and communication. Herzog follows Fini Straubinger to numerous events as she visits with other people in the deaf-blind community, discussing their struggle to live in the modern world with their disabilities. He reveals their communication with each other through a sort of sign language of strokes and taps on the other person’s palm. Three important scenes in the film, for example, involve: a home for people who, unlike Straubinger and her friends, were born deaf-blind; an airplane ride; and a man hugging a tree.At the home, a charitable group helps boys who were born deaf-blind, and have therefore experienced the world only through taste, smell, and touch. Herzog provokes the viewer to ponder what the world would be like, what, indeed, thought would be like for someone who had no concept of speech or sight. He shows how an act as simple as showering can be an alien and horrifying thing for someone who has no idea what a shower is and no way for it to be explained to him. This scene, perhaps, evokes best the profound sense of loneliness and isolation present in the film.A more optimistic scene occurs when Straubinger and her friends take a flight in a plane. Many of them are experiencing flight for the first time, and, unable to see or hear; the viewer is led to ponder the wonders present even in the mundane. Herzog, himself, has stated that the whole film is a preparation for the final image. In this final shot, one of the deaf-blind approaches a tree and embraces it in a gesture which expresses a fanatic materialism: it would be difficult to imagine a more stripped-down, economical illustration of what Heidegger calls Dasein, existential being in a ‘senseless’ world. The film is, therefore, a moving story about a group of seriously disabled people, which also delves into questions of being, knowledge, and communication that philosophers have been asking for centuries. The documentary will be screened on June 10 at 6.30 pm.Fata MorganaFata Morgana is a film by Werner Herzog, shot in 1969, which captures mirages in the Sahara desert. Some narration recites Mayan creation myth (the Popol Vuh) by Lotte Eisner, text written by Herzog himself. The film was initially intended to be presented with a science fiction narrative, casting the images as landscapes from another planet. This concept was abandoned as soon as filming began, but was realized in Herzog’s later films Lessons of Darkness and The Wild Blue YonderMuch of the film’s footage consists of long tracking shots filmed by cameraman Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein from the top of a VW bus with Herzog driving. The crew smoothed out the road themselves to prepare the shots. Herzog and the crew encountered many problems during the filming, most notably being imprisoned because cameraman Schmidt-Reitwein’s name was similar to the name of a German mercenary who was hiding from the authorities and had recently been sentenced to death in absentia. The documentary will be screened on June 11 at 6.30 pm followed by an interaction with M K Raghavendra.
Comments
0 comment