A Conversation with Werner Herzog - Doc/Fest 2019

[Applause] what a warm lovely welcomes again we're gonna have to do this quite a lot it's quite a wonderful round room thank you for being here vana and first of all get in a response when you walk out to room for the work that you've done and you get that kind of response how does that make you feel well it was not completely in vain I wanted to ask first of all before we dive into this incredible career what inspires you to continue to make films and films that I kind of feel more so than ever really encourage us as an audience to address and explore humanity I think well we should be cautious about what I'm trying to explore but I've always been curious in films I've always come with great vehemence at me so I deal with what comes with with a biggest kind of momentum and what I can't avoid anymore it's keep saying sometimes it's like the per glass in the middle of the night coming at you and one of them is swinging wildly at you so you you deal with it first you said that um you have to have no prejudice when making a film you have to be curious and I want to ask how you maintain that well sometimes there is some sort of a prejudice meaning a stylistic prejudice I I know when I do a film about the fires in Kuwait I have seen it every night in ten seconds clips on the news that the oil wells I'm speaking of the first Kuwait were warm and the entire country was burning or every single oil well was on fire and I had a feeling this look is really awful and and it was just a media sort of way to deal with it and I had the feeling I should do it I will do it number one much better and number two I would completely stylize it and I would stylize it in form of a science fiction film so sure there is a stylistic prejudice of approach already there and certain things that I am doing oh by the way we have a clip can we show the the beginning of lessons of darkness because it's an interesting an interesting moment whenever you are ready please just roll it lessons of darkness it's a very opening of it and can we leave the microphone open so that I can communicate back there so interesting yes that's the film I mentioned in in Kuwait I started right away like like a science fiction film and it starts out with a with a quote from the French philosopher Blaise Pascal the collapse of the stellar universe will occur like creation in grandiose splendor wonderful observation about our universe however it is not placed Pascal I invented it I made it up and Pascal by the way Pascal couldn't have said it better anyway but it transports the audience because of this caption the audience is transported elevated into a very high level already you step into this film and you will accept things on a very high level and in then for exemple its you see this smouldering where these fork in valleys and wide mountain ranges and shrouded in mist the mountain rages were actually not mountains there were tracks of tractors something like only 10 centimeters high and it was smoke in between and I filmed it in close-up and and I think by dint of declaration those are mountain ranges and then the first alien that we encounter wanted to signal something something to us and you are immediately in a science fiction film and science fiction because you see for 60 minutes you see a planet that we do not recognize anymore it cannot be our planet yet we now deep inside throughout the film as an audience we know it can only be our own planet and so I it's it's wildly wildly stylized and I I like to show something like this because what I see in the catalog this festival and other documentary festivals and almost everything is an extension of journalism and it's not filmmaking it's journalism and and I don't like this kind of way that documentaries are conceived and seen and and understood I don't like this anymore it's dusting out of my ears and I'm sick and tired of it and when I see something National Geographic at the at the airport hotel or sighs immediately switch it off you see National Geographic would never have allowed me to do such such a thing yeah impossible so you have to roll up your sleeves and do your own stylizations own filmmaking your own way to decipher the world but even you get into QA and being able to capture images for that was a journey in itself for you and you know you you have to kind of weave your way into it it's not an easy process even getting there to film it yes I was editing a film at that time and I kept saying to my editor I should go there and should make a film and try to get you had to have a permit by the Ministry of Information and it was lost in in bureaucracy there and I never got a permit and then I heard I read somewhere that a prett Paul Barris was planning to go there and I had the feeling he must have a shooting permit and I contacted him and we met briefly in the hotel room in in Vienna and and yes he had a crew and he had a helicopter pilot and he had cameras already in the permits in I said to him Paul I love your work he's one of these of these Terriers who does films dangling down from a rope from a from a sea rescue helicopter and filming a rescue and I mean a tough a tough guy and very fine cinematographer and I said to him Paul let me be blunt I like to direct the film and push you out is it okay that you visit is it okay that you only will be the cinematographer and the producer of the film and it just stood up and said would be an honor and we were so we were in business of course his input is beyond what he did as a cinematographer so I love him for that and so in a way I jumped on on a moving train so you have to be smart you have to to take initiative that's what I very often do not see with young filmmakers not enough initiative just just try and not enough criminal energy dance I don't see it so much in it and you have to you have to have it in you if you if you do this kind of work and I do remember what comes to mind is I had spoken with a young filmmaker who made a film in Portugal about school kids about seven eight nine year old school kids and the film was quite good and was sold to an American TV network and I immediately asked do you have all the to have all the releases yes he showed all the parents had to sign in the school itself had to agree that the filming was done and one was missing and he said to me it was a nightmare it was a nightmare I tried to contact the kid and the family but they had moved away and we couldn't locate them I engaged engaged a private detective and I spent no actually spent thousands of dollars in tracking down this family after five months he finally found the family 20 thousand pounds later he found the family and I said to him you know what give me a release form and give me a pencil and I will do the I will do the release for you in less than 10 seconds and you will have it in and you see bureaucracy loves to munch on paper that's a nature you feed them with paper you just put a name in and you put a while flourish of a signature under it and in your own business because the family the missing family is never gonna sue you they were okay with the filming so but it's it's this kind of bureaucracy that you have to bypass cheat out befuddle them them out of their wit's give them give them paper give them numbers that I will never understand but they keep busy so that's that's the way you have to deal with them like a bureaucratic paper shredder I like it yes but but at the same time the readiness to accept a certain amount of criminal energy otherwise you are not going to make films that are worthwhile to be made okay and on this particular film they're your rewards your voiceover on this film is is incredibly poetic and that's another one of your many talents but you have an extraordinary eye for things that you're able to vocalize with just such profound imagery that you create through these words and I wanted to ask about the process of that side of it with your filmmaking in terms of at what point are you thinking about the words that you're going to say well yes I think my voice has somehow caught on with audiences say like how I how I speak although my accent is awful but it's okay I accept that and they accept it but it's not only the voice in the kind of how I proclaim how I pronounce things it's also the writing it's because it's always self written text in the text usually and odd for example at the end of the of the film on volcanoes it's called into the inferno I say things that National Geographic would never allow you to do it like the Blaise Pascal wealth they would never allow such a thing and at the end of its it's a Content at the end of inferno I'm saying something about you see lava and boiling things and my voice says but it's writing the idea this boiling lava is everywhere under us on all continents under all seabed and it wants to burst forth and and destroy everything and it is Monument and in this kind of energy down there and this boiling mass is monumentally indifferent to scouring roaches reptiles and vapid humans alike so and it's beautiful and the way I say it is really significant all of a sudden people are stunned when in the film on Chatwin I see a house at a British sailor built himself who became the British consul in Punta Arenas in southern Chile at the tip of South America and he says he and he and we see the building and he built this phenomenally ugly house for himself and everybody is jolted in the audience yes it is phenomenally ugly but nobody pronounces it see it's it's a no now in cinema that they don't do it but I do it and I would encourage you as filmmakers and I mean probably most of you are filmmakers here yeah you you have to you have to to spring into the best states in you just let it let it come out because we are filmmakers we are not the observation camera on the wall we are not the fly on the wall and I hear it quite often we should be like the fly on the wall now I rehearse I stylized I script and I'm speaking of documentaries now and I do completely wild things and it's totally fine maybe we could show the end of my film on the cave Paleolithic cave okay for for cotton trees and it is all fifty two the clip is oh five two and it's a postscript I mean it's so wild has nothing to do with a Paleolithic cave absolutely nothing it has to do with perspective how would crocodiles moving towards the cave now see the paintings of the cave that are undecipherable of us can we show all 52 please that notion of fabrication imagination and stylization that almost give a documentary even more depth and truth than the truth can yes sir this kind of imaginary things and of course audiences love this PostScript because I take them straight into the real muff poetry and imagination and and audiences are very happy about that and and of course I do these stylizations and I modify what I see and I have to go out the French writer under Ajit who once famously said I modify facts in such a way that they resemble truth more than reality so that's a very profound statement and I really like it and in Shakespeare by the way said the most truthful poetry is the most famous so thanks God I have some big witnesses out there on my side so I have the feeling and I try to encourage you when you're filmmakers you just go for for a deeper vision go beyond journalism it does do you think that goes way back though to when you first discovered or were exposed to film because you weren't as a child until about 11 years old and I heard you talk about a traveling projectionists who came and you watched a film I think it was about Eskimos and because you grew up in in that world of you know ice and snow and you knew that world and you knew how people navigate their way through it and you watch these Eskimos on screen right there not Eskimos you know these are all quite clearly actors in a documentary because no no clue how to deal with snow and ice yes they did a very lousy job it was my first experience with cinema and I didn't even know that cinema existed until I was 11 it was very disappointing and I thought well fairly early dawned on me I would be a poet and I would be a filmmaker and I would do it much better but this but this wonderful thing that you have where truth isn't really connected to fact truth is a the creativity that you attach to Chris truth sorry is I think one of the wonderful things about your filmmaking yeah and it goes into into feature films as well yeah and and sometimes I use pure imagination actually we have a fine clip from Bad Lieutenant part of called New Orleans we have if you could prepare but I have to say a few things before that what was it we should have only one from l50 no sorry 0:03 it's our 3-part out the clip for a second we have a situation where the bad lieutenant played by Nicolas Cage is completely full of drugs and he's delirious and he meets other homicide detectives on an on observation outpost they watch house across the street because one of the suspects apparently is hiding there and he sees iguanas on the coffee table but the other detectives are homicide detectives they look at the table if they say there ain't no iguanas but he in his haze of drugs sees them but the funny thing is now we as an audience seed as well and you create an immediate conspiracy between the protagonist of the film and us as the audience and besides the iguanas we we filmed it much of it is the regular camera with which we did the dialogue and some of it is iguanas in extreme close-up and when it comes to this kind of filming I do it myself so I was a cinematographer and I had a fiber optic cable a flexible fiber-optic cable and I would I would move cautiously but really close to the skin of the iguana and move along towards the eyes and they look in a way I wanted them to look as stupid as it gets and and as perplexed as it gets and I had a light shining right into my camera so that the stylization becomes visible and how can I say all of a sudden you you are transcending what you see in a in a normal detective story can we play the clip oh oh three please it's okay so this is this is really fine filmmaking so you see you have to have the courage to do something like that yeah you will not see such a thing in a Hollywood movie they are too too much formalized in too much scared I don't know what it is but but the industry the the big industry does not allow you to do a thing like that so and you have to to step beyond what the rules the so-called rules are and I've always felt that I was the inventor of cinema in a way and sometimes in this for example the cinematographer Peter cycling uh he had removed my light he said how it shines into your into your tiny lens I said I need this light let's put it back and he said but nobody does it like this and and it looks awful and so I said let it look awful and now what I am doing and and by the way let's not care what the rules are and what the industry is doing we are inventing cinema here we are still inventing and until today I'm in a way feeling like inventing cinema do you feel like that with every film with every project in a way yes not not every for example the film on mikhail gorbachev meeting gorbachev you have to be within the strictures of what a documentary normally would be because you cannot have albino crocodiles in a film of mikhail gorbachev so of course they the content the substance of a film in a way dictates the form so it i have no problem to do to do a film on meetings with mikhail gorbachev that it's more an exception yeah that clip as well as the most perfect choice of track music track as well but we should be cautious about music so that i would need ten of you and spend the hour five days wind and look at many examples because it's very hard verbalize what music does in cinema but of course here you see it it's an example where where music transforms what you see into something even Wilder you heard the laughter that rippled around the room as well yes and it's it's very well chosen music and how do you know what you know you documentary feature film and stuff do you how do you know what you want to do next do you work like that in terms of I wanted to do another documentary or I want to you know for God's sake I'm not planning my career I've never had a career is I just plough on and and while I'm sitting here I should be actually shooting I shouldn't be here and and of course there's quite a few projects and and in there coming at me and I I never have been fast enough to keep abreast with a river the torrential river that's going there and I cannot keep abreast with it and so I work fairly fast a screenplay right normally in less than a week and editing like Grizzly Man was done in nine days and I've shot a feature film now in Japan family Romance LLC which I did after the film on Bruce Chatwin and after the film on Gorbachev and for the entire film that grand total of footage that I shot is slightly over 300 minutes I'm saying minutes not hours it's 300 minutes and some of the scenes are in one take and I could shoot them only once because I knew I would be arrested if I repeated it at high security area for example at the platform of the high-speed train the police raishin Tokyo because there was an attempt to firebomb one of those trains its security everywhere security cameras everywhere so I rehearsed the scene with three actors on a different level there were tens of thousands of people milling around and I was rehearsing in the middle of it and also significant I did my own camera there was no cinematographer I did the camera with a small very high caliber 4k camera with very professional sound but tiny tiny tiny you wouldn't even notice in a crowd that I was filming and that I was filming a feature film and so I watched the train coming in and it comes to a stop and it stops exactly 60 seconds and then it's dashes out and so the scene could be only 70 seconds so I timed it well in rehearsing and then I shot in 30 seconds into filming I saw security for security people rushing at me but they were frantically calling for backup and I saw them with my other eyes and kept filming for me and then we were prepared what to do in such a case you disperse you do not make eye contact you don't make eye contact you're just dispersed in seven different directions and and I said I go for the security guys and what you do in such a case of for example when you are in customs and they they are curious what do you have on your cart and and are you suspicious on or not you have to demonstrate from behind here you're just you a security person or a customs guard and I look at somebody who isn't there an imaginary friend and I look at him and I walk straight through them and I say host to an Arctic saying in Bavarian have you seen my friend Artie and I walk straight through them and they step aside in let's never make eye contact but go go for the enemy where where he comes at the sickest I love this whole approach to filmmaking where you you know it's the whole experience is exciting it just sounds no no it's forget about the experience no it's exciting for exactly sure I want to get the shot and I'm a professional man and I were to get away with it and I do not want to have my footage confiscated or so I just want to do the shot the excitement only feels when I talk about it it's but it was it was a a chain of finalities and you do the right thing you have to read you have to read correctly what two security people do mm-hmm this is some experience obviously that you know no you can go all these different parts of the world you go well I know I'm only gonna get away with this if I do this once yes and and you better know about the world when you're making films and for example I was to in the night on on freeways in Mexico City there are these overpasses five lanes freeways Criss crossing are going around in Mexico City and the two in the morning police a big police cars screeching comes by and forces me to a stop and police jumps out and tries to force me out on the way on the next exit out and I look down and it didn't look good and I look at the police and I instantly knew this was not police and I jumped I have no cell phone I jumped to the next Lane and there was still quite some traffic at 2:00 in the morning I stopped an entire line and I shouted at them in in Spanish call the police those are gangsters here and I stopped the next lane in the police fled there working stirrers and I could tell they had perfect uniforms the car was in total regular order like a police car and then next morning we learned that at this place people were taken out and there were murders women were raped it's awful awful awful but I see I see that they are not police I see it and and you have to have it in you if you make films you have to read the world you have to read the signs you have to read the situation you also have to not have peripheral vision by the sounds of things as well you know you've got a camera there on this train state station platform in Japan but you can see everything otherwise I do not see exactly what's behind me but but with my with my other eye I'm scanning and I see what's coming from from the side and is a person all of a sudden ending up in my shot and if so I would try to incorporate that straggler who ends up in my scene so yes you better have more than just the eye and eye I do not want to look at a flip screen that's an awful way to and people normally look here it under eye level it is a flip screen and and and they they lose himself since flip screens and I would never allow that I do not allow video play out on my set neither in documentaries nor in feature films why just because everybody is distracted by screens that are there and I've been at a Hollywood shoot and I arrive at the at the set and I see literally 30 asses looking at something and there were three screens the so-called video village they call it and everybody was looking at the screams and nobody was looking at the actors who were who were at arm's length away from them they don't watch it anymore and and it's completely misleading and distracting what you see on a screen can be very very misleading it can look wrong on but in context of a sudden it looks right in there endless discussions and endless repetition and then endless endless what shall I say collecting of footage they call it what do they call it coverage and I didn't even know what they meant by coverage when I shot Bad Lieutenant and I've secretly had to ask my assistant director I know what coverage is in my car insurance if you are riding with me and if I crash coverage you will be covered for medical expenses up to a quarter of a million dollars or so and he said now it's a shock not very close in the wide and from above and from here and I said now I'm doing but what I need for the screen I film what I need and that's because of that my shooting days are very short at 3:30 my day is over and I can't move to the next scene because the set is not ready and the actor hasn't arrived yet he was going to arrive at night by plane so so I said okay let's call it quits and it became very insisted until Nicolas Cage said give me an Apple box or something he stepped about it called the crew and he said crew listen you speak of coverage finally I'm working with a man who knows what he's doing so and in this he was completely right and from then on silence about coverage to avenge it and when you look when you look at shooting very often multiple cameras and they only shoot coverage they do not know what they are doing they do not know the central focus attention the very shot for which you have to go and they collect footage footage footage footage and it's all garbage it's all mediocre and they concoct a story out of it in post-production they move the decisions into post-production where it should not be it should be when you are filming yeah I wanted to talk but that was one of the things that you said is you can't make a phone you can't solve a film in post you shouldn't solve affair texting you cannot sell solve in post-production for example so you have to be you have to be prudent and you have to know what you are doing can we talk about Grizzly Man if you don't mind please we have a clip from Grizzly Man [Applause] when I watched back that last piece to camera that he did it's it's like he's saying goodbye you kind of feel like almost like he knew yes and it's a tape that we discovered very late in the editing and it was a very last shot that he took of himself and he was eaten by a bear in the next morning so and his girlfriend unfortunately as well so it's nobody should die that way but it happened and it was in the film is very much about the wild nature in the Disney ization of wild nature in this kind of profound misunderstanding of what constitutes wild nature so in a way it's a it's a very profound film and of course Treadwell has left us footage that nobody has ever filmed it will never have that again so it's it's a film very very much tribute to him as well although it shows his stupidities and his weaknesses in this craze and his and also his prudence in this noble side so it's a whole facet of one person the the footage was very very well selected and of course again the the pilot who is was his friend who is flying it was staged we had I knew this was going to be the song for the end and I had the the pilot sing along with with a song and I at the end he says and I think in the red wolf is gone and I said to him sing and Treadwell is gone so it's staged and because it is staged it becomes more truthful and it's not it's not into trying to give you fake news and and the pilot is really totally laconic and and wonderful because he's very very well staged very well directed that's what I do in documentaries I direct I direct them was an easy film to find the story about Timothy that you would that you know to find that of how you would tell his story because there was a lot of footage of his 100 hours in die shot maybe four or five hours myself half of the film was done with a few hours of film that I shot you had nine days to hit that deadline for the Sundance yeah it was it was a little bit silly because I finished the film shooting the film and then started editing it was 20th of September remembering that the producer said to me oh this looks fantastic we should that would be a film for Sunday and Film Festival and I said I am NOT making films for a festival but let's look II can do it easily because it's end of January they said yeah but there's a glitch and I said what is it submission ends in ten days from now and I said let me try and I've delivered it in nine days and you see I see many young filmmakers documentary filmmakers in particular they come with me it with great pride I shot 650 hours of footage my heart starts to sink right then and there and I'm editing since a year and a half that really the the industry the business of making films the costs of making films does not allow that you see it becomes too expensive you have to stay if you want to have a long arranged survival in in filmmaking you have to to know what time and money means in what it costs and how to be responsible with your time and with with a cash flow and you have to learn it you have to in feature films I have in my contract that I have the right to look at the daily cash flow at night with a key accountant and with a line producer and I do it I keep the finger at the pulse and I see immediately what is going wrong from the cashflow daily cash flow you know instantly and I said to the producer I have done 70 films none of them over budget five of them under budget this may be the six because I think there's a little bit of cushion here a little bit of cushion there and he says nobody brings in the film under budget and I said I try but I want to have a bonus and a good policy and it's a film which was 19 million dollars I brought the film back on his table 2.6 million dollars under budget it's completely unheard of I hope that was your bonus my bonus was was somehow the higher my savings were the more I would get so earned much more than for my fear my bonus and in addition to that producer wants to marry me kids keep sending me screen flies on a weekly basis and I send it all back to him and I said to him is a Israeli ex-army major I say to him RV this is all garbage again he says okay I'll send you another one next week what is it about a script though that you you look for or that you that I don't connect with you no way oh I write them myself I do not look for scripts Bad Lieutenant was an exception yeah there were two exceptions out of I don't know how many films so it has I instantly as a storyteller instantly now this is big it's so big that I have to do it and so it happens like that and I wanted to ask about how you you know whether you're going to sit down in a room with Mikhail Gorbachev or whether it's Elon Musk or whether it's someone on death row how you approach those situations and what your preparation is for well try wet orbits off of course it's an exception I I read his biography I spoke to people who knew him for decades I read transcripts of Supreme Soviet secret sessions before he was now published and also I did a lot of homework normally I go in unprepared and for example it's it's quite interesting to speak about very limited possibilities that sometimes you have and you have to function and people young filmmakers ask me what is your technique of interviews number one I do not do interviews I do conversations and you have to learn it in life itself traveling on photo are reading and so you have to you have to know the heart of many you have to know and you have to look instantly deep inside of them and you would know in figure out and I have a fine clip for that into the abyss it's about complicated murder stories two murderers three murder victims four crime scenes people who knew the murderers and there was a there was a young lady who was a bartender and after the murder both perpetrators went to the bar and started to break about whom they shot and she came I filmed with her she came with a young man next to her and she says oh I brought Jared with me say hello Jared because he knew the two guys as well and I said Jared maybe we can also speak on camera but please move out of sight would move out of earshot because I'm speaking to her now don't listen in himself and I filmed with her and I said Jared can you please and he said oh no now I have to leave in ten minutes I have to be on a roof and I have to do roofing and I said come on step here and and and I put him in front of the camera I knew nothing about him and and I can show you the first moment I had with him and I I met the man only for ten or twelve minutes in my entire life and the murderess on death row and one of them was executed eight days later you have exactly 60 minutes but 10 minutes you need quickly setting up your light your camera the the microphone and so and and that's it and you have to that's the only chance you have the only and for example the I the film begins with the chaplain of the death threat chamber he he's there for the people who die and he speaks in front of it comes rushing to me and says quick quick quick I have to be in the death house in 20 minutes and I said Reverend I thought it was in the afternoon no no let's go I said yeah ok let's do it and he speaks about executions and so like like an inner shout talk show and very shallow and so and and he speaks about how beautiful God's creation is and he drives in his golf cart in the morning and there's you and sometimes he sees deer and a squirrel and he sees a horse looking at him and I stopped him and now you will never learn it in a film school anywhere only in life I stopped him and I say Reverend tell me about an encounter with a squirrel and he comes apart he unravels all of a sudden this becomes deepened it's an unbelievable moment but I'll show you Jared Talbert from the man who may I met number o 57 please and it's a very first moment I had with him okay and there's also a really good example of encounters at the end of the world where you the scientist that you speak to who had not had he not spoken to someone in like very very there was a scientist and everybody who was studying a colony of penguins and I said to myself since at that time there was this big Disney film coming out March March the Penguins yeah and Happy Feet is all the sort of business Asian of nature I said in my film Annette Arctica there won't be a penguin but then I got interested there was a scientist who for 22 years has not spoken to anyone yes he did he was they told me two months ago he went to the medical station and he pointed at his anger Anke which was kind of sprained or some some injuries and he pointed to the doctor inside the ankle that was pretty much the last the only thing he said in the entire they said to me you won't be able to speak to him unthinkable and I said I will and I may even have a penguin in my film and and very soon I come to terms with him and he opens up and speaks to me do we have the clip I don't know which number it is is it its encounters at the end of the world the penguin how did you get him to talk then how did you build up that trust and comfort for him to open up to you talk yeah well I spoke about insanity of is there such a thing as insanity among animals and I explained to him how I got my permit to go into Antarctica through the National Science Foundation in in the United States and I made a proposal and I was puzzling and musing over the question had nothing to do with Antarctica I was fascinated that species fairly low like certain termites they breed or they keep whole armies of slaves of certain lice leaf lice that creates little droplets of sugar they keep them as slaves in their harvest droplets of sugar why is a creature like that capable of utilizing slaves and why is it that we have never seen a chimp saddling account in riding into the sunset so their cetera that to ernest angley and I said about penguins and it's a insanity and he which comes a little bit before that clip and his all of a sudden he opens up and he speaks about prostitution among penguins and I thought well that I have not heard in Disney and I got and he saw me I came to fascination and he started to open up it's not much dialogue but at least a few sentences and we've run out of time for us to chat but we're going to open up to our yeah audience if you guys have some questions we have some people with microphones so if you have a question please put your hand up and we'll try and sweep across the room as quickly as we can so we've got a lady right there in the second row and then anyone in this section anyone here and then we get a microphone to that gentleman for next please stand up and yes you question first of all thank you so much speak up a little bit thank you so much for what you said you have justify the things that I do I also did a FilmOn Mikhail Gorbachev for history television of Mikhail Gorbachev for history television Canada and in order for me to be able to interview him I lied I told Pavel that you know Pavel that I buffet miss filmmaker in Canada and which I'm not and that yeah it's the not and that our prime minister who is conservative so I didn't speak to him it meant everything for me to make that film too you know because our Prime Minister was such a fan of Gorbachev and with those lies I was able to make the film when when did you make the film if I'm a US in 2000 and 2007 I actually interviewed him twice once for Sakharov and then I was able to make a film on so you were 10 years ahead of me with your film which unfortunately I haven't seen well so I couldn't learn from your film but I'm happy to share with you still fascinated by him and he is not in good health I think we know that and do you keep in touch with him do you keep in touch with him not you can't really you can only do it through intermediaries because he most of the time it would be in hospital and connected to some whatever tubes and it's it's very precarious and of course we sent him the film and he actually saw it in public a year ago and was very warmly welcomed the the tragedy about him is said a good part of the Russian people see him a traitor and it's a very tragic misunderstanding it seems to warm up towards him now again so but I think your attitude talking about the Prime Minister whether you have ever spoken to the Prime Minister notice yes of course that's fine you deserve your luck I think you learned it you earned it yes thank you we have it someone here with them there we go right there pal oh good morning mr. Herzog thank you again for being a constant inspiration for me personally I'm been always intrigued by your films and your ideas on the intellectual level however this morning a little bit intrigued to hear a little bit about your ideas maybe about love marriage and emotions the only point I got some of this huge emotions from your films was the ending of the of your documentary the land of silence and darkness the brother hugging a tree by the end of the film with the music of Bob I believe I would really love to hear from you about marriage long relationships if you have any idea yeah but it's it shouldn't be much in the master class let's make it short I am a very lucky man happily married that's and that's the reason why I live in Los Angeles not in Hollywood I lived there and my wife is Russian born and I'm a truly lucky man so I am with her since 24 years in ten months in six days [Applause] has been like like honeymoon every day but what what I have an advice to because everybody says how do you manage him how does it hold that's strongly much of it is finalities it's maintenance maintenance daily watching out do I get on her nerve do I do the right thing you ever made a mistake do I pay attention do I keep silent at the right moment yes sure sure in this it's very very much maintenance in my advices whenever you fall in love and it's really big and important love cannot be replaced by anything but maintenance will will give you a long long happy life good answer we have a gentleman here with a question as well anyone else does people good next I wanna thank you for your film yesterday it was a it was a really great film yesterday you mentioned a filmmaker who doesn't read will only ever be a mediocre filmmaker and I went on your website and there's a there is a small reading list there it's got some interesting things like the Warren Commission report and things like that I'm hoping that you'd be willing to update that or give a a bigger list but my specific question is when you look back on your life how do you navigate between your personal life and all the responsibilities you have like you know to pay bills and things like that with the work of an artist and and you know like you know the life of the nomads and and going to the far-flung places how do you navigate the - do you have any advice on that yeah thank you okay there's basically two questions one is about how I navigate through a long term sort of filmmaking life I cannot really say what it is I'm always looking for more long-term relationships with let's say production people or a crew with a musician who would contribute music not only for this film but for next film and of course being responsible with money and I started out early when I was 1516 I wanted to make films but I was thrown out of every office of producers and TV and whatever so I knew I had to be a loner to be self-reliant and I worked the night shift as a welder in a steel factory and during day I was in school for two two and half years almost so it became self-reliant earned money and started with my first short films in 35 millimeter celluloid long range you will survive and when you are really careful about what you are doing and the intensity of how we are doing things and secondly becoming independent independence is not a good word but self-reliant of the industry in finances today you can make a long one and a half hour feature film for under five thousand five thousand pounds you can make a feature film a narrative feature film for theaters under 15 or 20 thousand pounds so if necessary earn the money if you are able-bodied and the money somehow and and roll up your sleeves and do it on your own so that's that's how you can always survive and and it will not kill you of wasting quote/unquote 5000 pounds but you have a whole film it may never be sold but but it will not kill you off but what kills you off if you are into a one and a half million dollar project with National Geographic and it turns out to be a flop in National Geographic hates it that's probably the end of your career for the next ten years until you scramble back up on your feet so you have to be bold and and looking ahead of what they are doing and and try not to shoot too much try to be focused try to try to be professional and professional means don't shoot 600 hours of footage if you do that you don't know what you are doing it's so but you know the first part of your question sorry the reading list don't get well when you're looking online the the rogue film school I have a mandatory reading list and those who attend have to read at least three or four of the five or six books that I that I mentioned that it could be 500 others it's not the books none of the books is about filmmaking I have never read a book about filmmaking in my life I've never been in film school so avoid all that crap don't do it don't do it and but there's one book I would like to mention which is on the list it's called the Peregrine obscure British writer Jay a baker published it in I think 1967 and today it has become a minor bestseller it's it's a very narrow view of the world it's only observing peregrine falcons when they were at the brink of extinction there were only 14 breeding pairs still alive in the United Kingdom today they have bounced back and in the kind of precision of observation in the passion and an unbelievably passion of what he sees there and it's absolutely not sentimental is a Sinead and true formalization of nature it's it's a stark naked incredible view at nature and if you're a filmmaker you have to have this relentless gaze the poet must not avert his eyes you just look at things never avert your eyes do it with a great passion for what what you are observing do it with a precision so and besides the Peregrine in some parts of the book it is pros of a caliber we have not seen since Joseph Conrad so and I keep advertising the book everywhere I have a chance because it is so wonderful hello stand up hello van Christie yeah Christie we saw your Nomad film last night and enjoyed it and in that you mentioned Lotte Eisner as a mentor so I wondered whether you feel a responsibility and a drive to encourage other filmmakers Lotte Eisner when she there's a long story behind her being Jewish she had to flee Germany at the at the very moment Hitler took power and she was in hiding in France and she was one of the great spirits of of cinema and she was working with all along Laura who had founded the Cinematheque in Paris the first cinematic ever and and she was very important for me and also for the young filmmakers around me in the early times of our filmmaking and she encouraged me and kept pointing out finally after the barbarism of the Nazi time there's legitimate culture film culture again in Germany and I really owe her a lot and when she was dying I was called latias dying come quickly I looked into train schedules and flight schedules and then I said now I will come on foot and I took a reading of a comparison that went straight straight straight to Paris on foot things of existential importance I would do on foot and I traveled something like 900 kilometers against snowstorm and ice and sleet and rain and and when I arrived to us out of hospital I would not allow her to die and she didn't know I was coming she actually didn't know and and then later when she she was 80 at that time but she lived another eight years or so and then she summoned me back to Paris and she said now come by train come quickly so I came and she said to me listen I am almost blind now I cannot read anymore the joy of my life reading the joy of my life watching movies I can't do anymore I'm almost paralyzed I cannot walk anymore and she said something very biblical like Noah having lived 920 years died saturated of life and she used exactly the same biblical term almost casually she says now I am saturated of life can you but there's still this spell upon me that I must not die can you lift it and I said sure Lottie it's lifted here hereby and she died eight days later and I had the feeling it was good and I said to her a few time now it's fine good it's it would be it would be quite all right acceptable and she died eight days later so I'm not superstitious but there was some some sort of a deep quest a pilgrimage out there and many of my films are in fact pilgrimages and some of it even done by the barefoot pilgrim so it's she she was very very important for me it's all I can say okay and then hello I was just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about working with Harmony Kareem and how you found well how many Corinne was searching for me and actually found me and I am some sort of a mentor for him and he his all-time favorites two all-time favorite films but one of the two is even Dwarfs started small he said he would kill for seeing the film if necessary and and then he he wanted me to act in one of his films actually Julian donkey boy as his father and he said to me it's a very personal story about a crazy family in the in the hostile dysfunctional father presiding over crazed family and I will play your son and I arrive from the set and and he was not my son anymore he was he hired an actor and I said harmony you cheated me he said no no I just thought this actor was better so and in the and then there was no real screenplay and there was for example one scene with my family on the table a trace grandmother and a daughter that was impregnated by her crazy brother and another brother was a wrestler in the loser and I'm sitting with him and in there had to be dialogue at the kitchen table I only knew I had to put them down there to be hostile and I see they had multiple cameras I see the little lights already on it I turn over to harmony and I say how many are we rolling and he North's are we really rolling and he says we are rolling and I say what what is a dialogue but satire log and he says speak so what do you do I concocted something I put down my son who tries to read the poem to me and I really put him down and then I speak about the end of Dirty Harry how Harry blasts a bad guy away and at the end when everybody runs out of bullets and Harry knows that he still has one one bullet left in his gun and he looks at the bad guy he was on the ground and trying to click at him and he says to the bad guy you have to ask yourself one question am i lucky so and I am speaking about Dirty Harry all of a sudden but it was out born out of the need of things and I've been in another film by him and now he's a very fine very very very talented young man sometimes two undisciplined that's when when you are you have to you have to pair talent and with some portion of discipline as well and all the great composers for example where were disciplined disciplined workers as well a part of the great musical inspiration they had and you have to you have to work like a composer of music yes as inspiration and there's melody and there's something big going out but writing it down and taking the time and focusing means a lot of discipline so what do you enjoy about acting well I enjoy to do the things where I'm really good so I accepted being the badass bad guy in Jack Reacher because I knew I was hired to spread terror and I said yes I can do that and so I did it and it was good I mean I had a lot of office and I did for example recently something in the mandalorian it's a spin-off of Star Wars and in the screenplay really looked good in my part looked very interesting in the city I can do it it's it's not at the badass bad guy but but somebody you can't really trust and I said yeah I can do it and so I accepted the offer that was also in the last 12 months where I did the three films three films Mandalorian and I had a workshop in the Peruvian jungle with young filmmakers who had to make a film within ten days so it was really pressure on them so yeah I I do only things where now I would be good and for jack reacher they paid me handsomely and i was attractive and and it comes it comes very easily to me and i learned something in the early phase of Fitzcarraldo there was Mick Jagger a society kick of the leading character in the plays a a demented Englishman with a huge turn-of-the-century barber chair on his back in reciting Richard the third the opening soliloquy I mean incredibly and Jagger had something in him that was amazing he would be out arguing about God now's a mineral water or the per diem and I said Mick the cameras rolling he takes three steps steps in front of the camera and he's a demon it's unbelievable and I thought I have to learn and and when they called me I would step in the in front of the camera and I would be the the really frightening bad ass bad guy so it's I learned of course from some of the best of the best yeah everyone here yeah anyone else around here just my phone oh thanks again my questions about actually how your personal narratives often intermingle with the main stories you're telling and I'm wondering if you can talk about your process with your editors like Joe and Maya and how you guys come to terms with where your narration is necessary and possibly sometimes where you don't go far enough you know how you make that decision thank you yeah I see it narration always comes during editing I see here that there has to be a bridge to the next chapter or so I need to say something or I see I would this is a little bit opaque it has to be in sharper focus I have to make a commentary or I observe something that hardly anyone's would see unless I pointed it out so I for example Treadwell seems to be hesitant to leave the last frame of his last video and you actually start to see it now how is undecided and then finally leaves a frame I write it instantly while we are sitting at the editing and I have a professional microphone right next to there we switch things off and I immediately recorded in studio quality and then it turns out it's five seconds too long so I have to stretch the image by five seconds if it's possible if not I now I have to shorten the text and I would do that and while I'm while I'm editing and ploughing on I write and speak and incorporates the the commentary write them in there and that's the liveliest way to do it if one more question because I have to leave unfortunately I have to morning winner you've had some tough shoots in your career is the one film or one moment where the the determination you known for was beginning to fail you and you were thinking I need to walk away from this project know this when you have started a film there's only one way in nothing else you have to finish it no matter what you have to you do not leave a film unfinished and yes of course I have had very very hard difficult shots shootings fits corral door one of them moving a ship over a mountain is not a easy task but but the realtor film that that was played more than aunt went beyond my control was fata morgana because I was I was taken prisoner in in Africa and you don't have control over your film anymore when you're in the prison cell and and besides I had malaria in Pilar Zia a very serious blood parasite disease at the same time so I was not in control of anything anymore and I could not be transported any further I was too ill so and yet I finished a film I was flown out of the Central African Republic and then somehow continued shooting the film while I was shooting my film even Dwarfs started small but very early on and I was a very young filmmaker at the time it was clear to me yes you can buy half a bread at the bakery that's fine you can do that but there is no such thing as half a film you have to do you have to master the courage and the perseverance that that's in you and you have to learn about this actually what has always given me courage is a proverbial saying that I heard in the in the Peruvian jungle it goes la perseverance es donde los Dioses perseverance is where the gods dwell so learn that okay thank you very much you [Applause]

Channel: Sheffield DocFest

Views: 30,464

Rating: 4.9497485 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, film, film festival, film festivals, factual storytelling, television, sheffield, werner herzog, edith bowman, sheffield doc/fest

Id: SXgRCI33Js0

Length: 72min 50sec (4370 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 11 2019