Back in college, I was sort of a Werner Herzog groupie.
I’m pretty sure the first Herzog movie that I saw was 1972’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God, but in pretty short order — in part because of a class in contemporary cinema, in part because of a German film class that I audited, in part because of a great repertory cinema in St. Louis — I saw Fitzcarraldo, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (for this post, I’m using the sometimes-lame English titles on IMDB — that one translates as Every Man for Himself and God Against All), Land of Silence and Darkness (a documentary about people who can’t see or hear), Heart of Glass (hypnotized actors!), Where the Green Ants Dream, Stroszek, Woyzeck, and Nosferatu the Vampyre — and no doubt I’m leaving a couple out. And of course I saw Burden of Dreams, the fabulous documentary by Les Blank about the making of Fitzcarraldo.
I lost touch with Herzog’s work after a while — there was so much of it! — but never lost my respect for his artistry and intensity. As he has aged, Herzog has taken on an evermore theatrical persona as he has tackled fundamental questions of existence, like in 2005’s Grizzly Man.
News of this Sunday’s screening of his latest documentary came too late for my upcoming column in Do in the Savannah Morning News, so I’m writing this post. Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which delves into the prehistoric art in caves in southern France, will screen at 7 p.m. on Sunday, June 26th, at Victory Square in Savannah. Tickets are $8, cash only. Because of both cost and technical reasons, we’ll be seeing the film in 2-D (but 35 mm). The Facebook invite is here. Jim Reed with the Psychotronic Film Society created the event page and wrote this about the screening:
CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS is the debut booking from the area’s newest independent film society, CineSavannah, which is run by Tomasz Warchol. Many of you may recognize him as the program director of the Reel Savannah Film Group, which has shown many movies at this Victory Square venue in the past few years.
As Reel Savannah is cutting back on the frequency of their screenings for now, Tomasz is “taking up the slack” himself by continuing to bring in the same high-caliber of foreign and indie titles they are known for, on a more regular basis.
The PFS of SAV is proud to partner with him and CineSavannah to help promote these worthwhile efforts to broaden the viewing options for adventurous moviegoers in our area – and we encourage all our friends and fans to support this (and future) risky and expensive CineSavannah bookings by showing up and buying a ticket.
Here’s the trailer for Cave of Forgotten Dreams:
And here, because it showed right up when I looked for it, is a much younger Herzog in Burden of Dreams. Thank goodness for YouTube (and its questionable copyright uses).