In Focus: Werner Herzog and the Documentary Form

January 24–February 28, 2024

This lecture & screening series focuses on six nonfiction works spanning Werner Herzog’s iconoclastic career. We are delighted to welcome film critic and journalist Michael Fox, who will offer a short lecture before each film and lead the post-screening discussions.

Read full description

  • The Fire Within

  • Encounters at the End of the World

  • Land of Silence and Darkness

  • Little Dieter Needs to Fly

  • Grizzly Man

  • Into the Abyss

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • In Focus: Into the Abyss

    • Wednesday, February 28 3:10 PM–6 PM
    Werner Herzog
    United States, United Kingdom, Germany, 2011

    Lecture & Screening

    Werner Herzog’s very first film concept centered on a prison. Decades later, he reflects on a triple murder in a small Texas town through interviews with two men convicted of the killings. As he so often has, Herzog “probes the contradictions of the human heart, in which nobility and savagery are so entwined as to be almost indistinguishable” (A. O. Scott, New York Times).

    Lecture by Michael Fox

  • In Focus: Grizzly Man

    • Wednesday, February 21 3:10 PM–6 PM
    Werner Herzog
    United States, 2005

    Lecture & Screening

    The film that “turned [Werner] Herzog’s distinctive Bavarian accent into a pop culture phenomenon” (IndieWire), Grizzly Man investigates the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, who lived with—and was killed by—bears. Herzog used and mused over Treadwell’s video footage for this memorable essay on nature, both human and wild.

    Lecture by Michael Fox

  • In Focus: The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft

    • Wednesday, February 14 3:10 PM–6 PM
    Werner Herzog
    France, United Kingdom, United States, 2022

    Lecture & Screening

    Werner Herzog's “requiem” for another pair who followed their passions: the globe-trotting husband and wife volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, who filmed hundreds of hours of astonishing footage of volcanoes. “This is a radical filmmaker acknowledging two kindred spirits. . . . Solemn, sparse, and hypnotic” (Film Stage).

    Lecture by Michael Fox

  • In Focus: Little Dieter Needs to Fly

    • Wednesday, February 7 3:10 PM–6 PM
    Werner Herzog
    Germany, United Kingdom, France, 1997

    Lecture & Screening

    Werner Herzog accompanies a Vietnam War POW back to the jungles of Laos to relive his imprisonment and torture in this award-winning documentary.

    Lecture by Michael Fox

  • In Focus: Land of Silence and Darkness

    • Wednesday, January 31 3:10 PM–6 PM
    Werner Herzog
    West Germany, 1971

    Lecture & Screening

    Werner Herzog’s 1971 documentary on the world of those who are both deaf and blind defies expectations; neither morbidly depressing nor heartwarmingly uplifting, it is “so intense and abstract that at times it reaches great lyrical heights” (New Yorker Films).

    Lecture by Michael Fox

  • In Focus: Encounters at the End of the World

    • Wednesday, January 24 3:10 PM–6 PM
    Werner Herzog
    United States, 2007

    Lecture & Screening

    A voyage to the end of the world—Antarctica—to discover the ecstatic realities of those who have chosen to live amidst nature’s awe-inspiring vastness. “A portrait of people in search of the sublime” (Cinema Scope).

    Lecture by Michael Fox