German filmmaker Werner Herzog joins us November 9–12 for the launch of this major retrospective, which continues into 2024. Herzog’s great facility for storytelling (he writes nearly all of his screenplays) and his fascination with eccentric characters, whose lives and endeavors he observes, allow him to illuminate the human condition in his narrative and nonfiction films.
Read full descriptionWerner Herzog’s breakthrough film garnered a special jury award at the Berlinale and this appraisal at the New York Film Festival: “A strange, intense work . . . influenced by Borges and Kafka. The hypnotic probing of cruelty, indifference, and unspoken horrors becomes a metaphysical comment on man and his ideologies.”
Bad Lieutenant benefits from Werner Herzog’s fearless direction and a delightfully unhinged Nicolas Cage, who brings a manic energy and humor to his performance. It is Herzog’s documentarian’s eye that brings an extra depth to the film. “He constantly frames the devastated New Orleans with heartbreaking poverty and ruin in the foreground and the gleaming metal towers of affluence in the background” (Toronto International Film Festival).
The author of more than a dozen books of prose, Werner Herzog reads from the long-awaited Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir and engages in conversation with the audience.
This film about the creation and transformation of things is between documentary and feature, utopia and reality, beauty and decay. Hallucinatory images of African deserts and dunes are combined with music by Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen; Lotte H. Eisner reads the Guatemalan creation myth.
Stunningly photographed in hazardous locations in Peru, Aguirre, the Wrath of God takes the viewer on a mad voyage as frightening and entertaining as one of Edgar Allan Poe’s maelstrom-bent epics of demented discovery. Featuring a seething, controlled performance from Klaus Kinski, who delivers an unforgettable portrait of madness and power.
Werner Herzog’s unforgettable 1974 classic is based on a real historical incident of an adult foundling. Bruno S. gives a revelatory performance as Kaspar Hauser, a man who literally has no concept of society, no language, and no knowledge, but who finds civilization terrifyingly uncivilized.
The White Diamond is a film about the daring adventure of exploring the rainforest canopy with a novel flying device. Airship engineer Dr. Graham Dorrington embarks on a trip to the giant Kaieteur Falls in the heart of Guyana, hoping to fly his helium-filled invention above the treetops.
Werner Herzog’s gripping documentary shows the disaster of the Kuwait oil fields in flames. In contrast to most documentaries—especially ones tackling the destruction of the planet—there’s minimal commentary and no talking heads. “An evocation of hell on earth . . . with an epic, elegiac musical backdrop” (Time Out).
Werner Herzog’s latest narrative focuses on Japan’s bizarre “rent-a-family” business, a professional stand-in service that provides clients with actors who portray a range of roles, including friends, family members, or even coworkers.
“In a film of stunning spectacle and furious struggle, boat and task become centerpieces for two tales of obsession. Every bit as driven as Fitzcarraldo’s efforts to move the craft upward, Mr. Herzog’s determination to perform the feat in actuality inspired Les Blank’s documentary Burden of Dreams, also released in 1982, about the making of the film” (Peter M. Nichols, New York Times).
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker and longtime collaborator with Les Blank, Maureen Gosling was nominated for Best Editing for Burden of Dreams by the American Cinema Editors. Gosling joins us for the presentation of a new digital restoration of this celebrated film.