Werner Herzog in Conversation with Paul Holdengräber | Full talk at Onassis Stegi

[Music] well first of all I want to thank you all for coming here and I want to thank the NASA's Foundation for inviting me and for having the patience of two years waiting for Vanna haddock to come here the first time he is speaking in Athens in a public forum I want to also thank the president of the foundation Anthony papadimitriou and aphrodite vana your Taku I think I got that right which I'm so proud of it's a great pleasure and a great honor for me to be here then and I I think speak once a year together as I've been asked quite a few times why do you speak once a year together haven't you arrived at the end of what you have to say and I often say that with some people you arrive at the end after three minutes with some people it just takes a whole lifetime and I always say that I speak to vana hare took once a year because it's the only thing that really keeps me sane now then tell us something about what we just saw this is a brand new film which isn't even out yet about Bruce Chatwin and why a film about Bruce Chatwin now what is it special about Chatwin that made you feel you had to do this film well we shout this here at the very beginning because in the way it sums it up what we are doing during this evening it has many elements in it and of course it's brand new film everybody believes that my last film was meeting Gorbachev which is going to be shown publicly very soon it has actually been shown at some festivals but in the United States meeting Gorbachev will be released theatrically in a few days from now but this year nobody has ever seen the PBC who produced it gave us permission I always keep saying take it as work-in-progress you have not seen anything nobody has ever seen anything this year you're the very first audience for a small segment of the film Bruce Chatwin I was asked to do this film because we have been in a way close to each other very much concerning fundamental themes about nomadism the title of the film by the way is nomads in the Indian secondary title in the footsteps of Bruce Chatwin so and since he ran into me in Australia when I was preparing where the green and stream during that time we were both working in Australia and I wanted to meet him and found out where he was and he did hurt to Melbourne at that time when I was doing pre-production and we had an immediate rapport in in fact it was strange because from the airport when I picked him up he was non-stop storytelling it was a phenomenal storyteller and I squeezed in some stories whenever he took a little breath I tried to tell stories so it went for 48 hours literally I mean we slept a few hours in between but at breakfast he finished the sentence that he had left unfinished and chattering for example and we have witnesses and in the film you see it he would enter into a house where there was a party but he wasn't even invited and people tell me that while he was before he entered the house when he left a car and when he entered the house he was already telling a story and entering he was in the middle of the story and everybody would congregate yes sir of course and and he was mimicking very well with Australian Aborigines and it's in the film he spoke about one story that's vividly in my mind a very wealthy American couple arrives in the Australian outback at a mission station where there was a group of Aborigines and the they fly in in a private aeroplane and the lady the woman comes in high heels and immediately takes photos and takes photos of an old Aborigine who is squatting on the ground and he spits at her feet in contempt and she knows she has done something wrong she should have asked permission and she apologizes profusely and she says I should have asked for permission and can can I can we bring you something can we give you something do you need anything here we can send you things what what would it be in the aborigine without missing a beat says for Toyota pickup trucks and heed how he mimicked the voice of the aborigine was phenomenal so a quintessential storyteller and of course we had many things in common traveling on foot for example can I can I show image number one yes what is it oh yeah yeah the rucksack her do we have it here when when Chatwin when Bruce Chatwin died I just had finished a film that I did in the southern Sahara about nomadic tribes Minh and he wanted to see it but when I arrived I mean he was there was only a skeleton left of him there I mean he was already dying and he said to me when I'm dying I'm dying has helped me to die quickly and so I said shall I bash in your head with a baseball bat wash I shoot you what do you what do you mean by that and he thought I could get him some sort of strong sleeping pills that would put him away which didn't happen but he he actually saw my firm in bits ten minutes and then he would lapse into a semi-coma and wake up again and then he would shout out I have got to be on the road again I've got to be on the road again and then he realized he looked at his legs there were only bones and he said I cannot carry my rucksack anymore it's too heavy and I said to him proves I can carry it I'm strong and then when he actually was dying only two days away from dying he asked me if I could leave he was embarrassed to die in front of me and he gave me his rucksack which I he has carried it 10,000 kilometers on his back and I have carried it and it's very valuable enormous an enormous piece of reminiscences and lifestyle and exploring the world and exploring landscapes and you have seen it in the in this clip and we left it long enough so that you could see a portion black and white of the windmills at the plateau of Recife in eastern Crete on the island of Crete I was travelling on foot all along the island with a donkey but in the mountains not along the coast I was in the mountains and I come across towards the end of passing all the way through the island of Crete I look down and I see what you see in the film and I was only 15 or 16 and I was sure I was insane what I see cannot be it is beyond what you expect beyond beyond sanity deranged but I I thought I was deranged I thought I was insane Chatwin very interestingly enough talks about the rain the rain Range landscape yes it's a very good way to to label it and it's in a way it is an inner landscape unfortunately it does not exist anymore it was used the windmills were used for irrigation but they replaced it many years ago with diesel generators to pump water to the surface and only a year ago the mayor of the small town or the village of LA City sent me an email when I could join a committee to restore it and to bring it back to life but I think they shouldn't have removed it in the first place it sits where it sends it saddens my heart that what you see does not exist anymore and and what also brings you I mean you you you you spoke about that in passing but it's so important you will notice it when a heads up doesn't talk about walking it's very important he doesn't say revelling when it's for travelling on foot yeah every time I've used walking he corrects me and says no it's travelling on foot and one other backpacker you know you see backpackers have there you're not their house no they have their household on their back meaning attempt the sleeping bag cooking utensils and not one of those wherever it's not my way to experience a landscape and experience in the world it is something different you know when when you are travelling with the bare necessities you have to get in touch with people you're thirsty and your canteen is empty and there's no water anywhere so you have to knock at the next farmhouse that's when you get stories and that's why I get stories but I need some water I have to ask and I feel my canteen my bottle in it in your kitchen and of course everybody is very suspicious but the moment they understand that I have come on foot that I have traveled on foot they answer you they ask you where you came from yeah I would say let's say Munich and they said but this is 1200 kilometers away how did you come a city on foot from that mill and you can tell if somebody has traveled that far you can look you can smell it and you can tell so and from there it is I mean you sure you know that we might evoke it because I'm not sure everybody knows but you actually did do that trip from Munich to Paris well that was a different it was a traveling yes yes that was when my mentor very old lady Lotte Eisner was something like 80 and she was dying and I said I will not allow her to die I will immediately travel to Paris but of course I immediately thought about flight connections train connections and then very quickly I decided now I will come on foot it doesn't matter how far it is it's something like three and a half weeks straightest walk and it was in beginning of winter with snow storms coming from the West at me and I arrived and she actually shouldn't she did not know that I was coming on foot but she was out of hospital and she died she died then something like eight years later when she was around 88 and she asked me to come again and she said well there's still this spell on me that I must not die I'm not allowed to die can you lift the spell because now I'm almost blind and I cannot read anymore I cannot see movies anymore I cannot walk anymore and it would be time now for me to die and I said lotty it's fine yes spell is taking and from you and and she died I think eight or ten days later which was fine then it was okay when I traveled once around Germany my own country on the very border yeah yeah Austria Switzerland France Belgium Holland I want to mention also that the reason also I'm bringing of walking in ice of walking in ice I'm walking a nice is that you told me that there is a Greek translation yes that it's coming out now that is only yes very soon and it it's wonderful that this book will be will be available it's a book that doesn't go away it has had numerous editions in German language it was written back in 1974 Diaries and it doesn't die away and and all of a sudden means in some South American countries Chile Argentina people start to discover it its bestseller in Chile bestseller in Argentina and I think it's right if there's something good about it because the the the written things of walking in ice and then I have it also conquest of the useless it's when I did the film Fitzcarraldo but it's not Diaries of moviemaking it's it's something else it's also invented landscapes fever dreams in the jungle and wood in this book this book doesn't go away and I think what I've written will live longer than my films I'm totally convinced of that I may be wrong like in many other things but I don't believe it that this will coming very and who to walking on foot you you have said about chat when my the Chatwin said about walking on foot he said my god is a god of if you walk hard enough you probably don't need any other God yes he says it well and we had a your degree that lead yes and we both knew that traveling on foot was the way to experience the world the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot and I had a dictum which said traveling on foot and now I have to get it right tourism is sim but traveling on foot is virtue and and stories and tourism is a very profound form of sin and it's one of the sins of of our present time although it has its roots in in former time times but mass tourism is something which has done too much damage to cultures to everything it's it's not what we should do you know I remember an essay which George Santayana the American Spanish philosopher wrote called the philosophy of travel where he very interestingly enough says that Aristotle said that plants are firmly planted in the soil yeah they get their sustenance from the soil while men have the intelligence of locomotion yeah well said I didn't know that quote I have always surprised me yes I always have a few quotes a few new ones for you yes but I would like to come back to the windmills and yet women in the experiencing landscapes it started very early for me and when I saw LA City I think I was 16 I was a kid I was a school kid at that time but I I went because I was in a way in the footsteps of my grandfather Goodall who was an archaeologist in look at image 17 and he did his life's work on the island of Kos he discovered and excavated the escaped Ionian in Kos and he was always more fascinating for me than my own father my own father had very little contact with me but with my own grandfather I had a very deep rapport although I most of the time during his eight last eight years he was completely insane and I was always fascinated by things that became deranged and not in in the orderly sort of thinking he used to have his scientific books and underlined important passages with a pencil but the last books that he actually read it worked on every single word every single line from beginning to end was underlined and highlight it so and in some times he went what did that mean to you then it was it was very very stunning for me because I myself am a fairly I'm not a very fast reader and I absorb things and I contemplate over lines that I've read their books where I it took me a fortnight until I got over the first paragraph and it's know it's true for example Tomas Bernhardt a wonderful Los Austrian writer and the book is Guillen walking and the first paragraph is so strange and so complex that it took me a fortnight until I could read on you remember it no it's it's took if I start to quote from it I would drive you nuts I am NOT going to do that but back to to my grandfather also was sometimes very repetitive he would not for example recognize my own grandmother with whom he was married happily for over 60 years and he would be formally dressed for dinner and he would address her with madam and be very polite and speak to her and my grandmother when when he had died said to me she confided in me and she said he was such a wonderful husband she would never allow him to be admitted to a lunatic asylum she took care of him and he would each night in fear he would be deported God knows why and where he would put all the furnitures on top of each other for the truck to take it away and he would put all his dresses out of the cup words and and pile it up and she would all always put it back it was complete a complete repetition of things and really very tragic and we as children we were cruel and we would shout at him I have to say it in German Herr professor mentioned lesser mr. professor cannibal it rhymes and he would come after us but we would climb into the birch tree where he couldn't reach us and my grandmother noticed it one day and I got the hardest beating in my life and I deserved it it was fine here I never regretted her of having gotten that beating and that one day let's let's look at the image 18 and 19 but go here one day at dinner he would that's part of the escapee I own one day he would fold his nap came very carefully and put the table in order and he would stand up and bow to her and he would say madam if I was if I were not married already I would ask for your hand and it's really sweet it really touches my heart he's one of those and and somehow with his echo of these repetitions of putting his things together and waiting for the truck every night and repeating phrases and underlining phrases in books in a way influenced a short film last words which it's my only film that I shot in modern Greek language at that time more than 50 years ago I actually spoke Greek which is completely buried now and so anything we could but it's a very strange film it but that's okay I mean a lot of things we will show could pass for strange so I think we should show it because we're talking about a right now with so is it you want to say something about it no it's it was just totally bald courageous to make a film where people repeat what they just said and I found musicians in the town of rhythm nan and I really loved it the old man who plays the lira and I quickly arranged the film around him and shot it partially at nighttime on Sundays while not regular working hours or regular days I was shooting signs of life and it's very dear to my heart because that in a way it was a breakthrough for me because I did things that were not within the rules of filmmaking nobody has done anything like this and the cinematographer at that time said to me ah yeah you are doing things that you shouldn't do it it's not how films are being told and I said now I'm telling it like I think it should be told and it's new ground and we are inventors of cinema I always had the feeling I was a inventor of cinema and that's one of those moments and literally at the volume and we'll get a page away all right oh they're not showing the right now it's a wrong run no no no it's a Miss a with it sam pookay it's I should have said it's my mistake it's number three number three by the way the the house here is phenomenal you you do not see everybody who has worked here on the set of a last moment changes and in the people whom you do not see normally did a wonderful job in very very quick Paul the mistake is you but now we show the right one which is number you you notice that the mistake is me yes now now we now we see we see clip we see clip oh three oh three okay let's get it right [Music] [Music] about the last to the viewers and then I do amongst people the show yeah [Music] [Music] the ricotta monopoly means oenologue anemia Pelagia nutria hormone oestrogen uppity Johnson a la putana Lemurian anorexia variegated anything country human on arrow you can sternness program is an apology pammi are gonna see all your CP Anunnaki Rory's motors imminent earth another fisca polytope Sharon Bosnia Marisa Bethany 11 de perak policy stories NASA test ellipses Millau Boris testing camera after chandra bose vulcanized bezanika the 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arms Alexis got a liver Tennyson Delia said alerted after Malaysia see political their new generation lu lu t po w del UT puta sucia patella osteomalacia suing resolution [Applause] [Music] yes film is very dear to my heart for many reasons you know you said it is as if I filmed of the musicians you said it is as if I film the last troubadours how did you mean that you when you see them it's like like an ancient form of communicating through music in just in a tavern IIT at the harbour and they would they would come out and play music and just for the joy of it and people came and like me and I would sit with him for long long hours and talk to them and have wine with them and learn music they hadn't know it's all all without music scores they explained that just by listening and that's a way I like to to hear music and and in a way I imagined that in ancient Greek times tragedies and chorus the way it was sung or the way for example the Odyssey was recited and a chant was probably in a similar way like what we see today it's a it's an old and very ancient tradition and on the island of Crete of course you had it for a long time I think it's fading away but what what I witnessed in in the mid-60s is something which is very deeply embedded in my heart and we look at image number two and then at image number three I am well that's my from my school the Odyssey I had to learn ancient Greek let's pass over quickly image nobody if all discovered that I made the accents for the hexameter but you yet let's break it down oh I knew you wouldn't want to talk about this but I'm gonna keep you there for me because you actually said that this is I did find this in your bookshelf you said that there was a moment when you actually spoke in hexameter I could yes at that time I could speak in free speech in in conversation with you I could speak in hexameters it was so in me that I that I I could make it up and it came with great ease and you see for some of the first things on first page or so you see in pencil the the hexameter accents which of course in in a way partially artificial because for example third line from from the bottom Paris the accent is on the a but in in examiner it would be it would shift to the end of the world so anyway and you'd like and you like the word doom yes yes I mean how it starts you remember yeah x8 a Swiss would read it many Nydia palais at your heels aloma named the the wrath and illuminae you cannot really fully translate but it's it's so full of doom and so full of wrath but I am reciting naat or EC but that's the beginning of the Iliad and I I must say it started to love it later much more than during school I was always unhappy in school and would always be at the brink of being thrown out and because I'm so much self-taught and today I'm going a little bit back into into ancient Greek although I use for example an Edition where you had where you would have English on one side and the original ancient Greek on the other side but I I try not to look at the translation but instead of looking into the dictionary I I have a look at the English translation so and I read some obscure writers like the order of cyclist who is an encyclopedia snot not really that intelligent but but wonderful when it comes to the father of Alexander the Great when it comes to philip ii of macedon and also to Alexander the Great and you travel you travel there certain books that you put in your backpack as it were yes sometimes I do have things on me by the way Chatwin quite often in the rucksack that we shout to you head of walking in ice on him he loved this book and so I was astonished that he would care so much about this variable but but some of the books you travel with books by ancient Greek writers who offer you consolation not the Greek is actually Livy Livius second Punic War about Hannibal and and fabulous Maximus conked out the the one who it was his an ugly by world and a pitted on or none so in this way not a decorative but but to make put him down the one who was cowardly hesitant who is a coward always withdrew and lured Hannibal into his room by attrition war by attrition so in and I have the feeling although he was derided all through history until today is still the greatest of all heroes and it's good when I'm in trouble making a film a and and when it's really getting bad I read Livy second Punic War so but that's my private so or sometimes the book of Job here book of Job in the Bible all the misfortune sets come upon one singing men and it's how does it help you it helps me because because they had it even worse and I could ever have and it's strange because I used to attract disasters in signs of life the leading actor that you see in the film on this fortress on the island of Kos had an accident where he fell two meters from a wall and he broke his heel bone which is very critical because all the forest kinetic force of walking on the hill bone and for six months he could not really move and when he came back we had to interrupt shooting for six months and he came back with a with a big complicated mechanical apparatus all the way up to his hip we could film him only from his hip upwards and three weeks before we started shooting there was a military coup d'etat of all things so it's out of the blue and borders were closed no flights no trains nothing I mean my shooting permits nothing a little you know what I mean things happen I mean I don't know if you notice today the weather in Athens I'm quite convinced but it has something to do well the sea or yes you have to you have to to brave the stormed in in in Greek there's a nice proverb or capitalist faintest in Fortuna the captain the captain somehow emerges shows when when this is real storm I remember I remember last time when when Vanna was in in New York reading at a bookstore just before he the furrier yeah just before you spoke there was thunder and lightning but a real one but a real one no no today was pretty real I mean I was I was I was I knew I was in Athens with Vanna let's go but let's move on I'll move on to landscapes of the soul I want to read a little passage and then get around to to reading from I'm reading from a book that I think is quite quite remarkable it's a book of conversations that Vanna had with Paul Cronin it's called a guide for the perplexed the tightly sterile my friend from the Jewish philosopher medieval philosopher Maimonides his title is almost identical yeah but it's such a beautiful title a guide for the perplexed that I had to take it I couldn't help it sometimes sometimes you you need to steal but here he I'm going to read a passage of it yeah I never present literal landscapes in my films where I show instead a landscapes of the mind locales of the soul just as there is no such thing as background music in my films landscapes aren't picturesque or scenic backdrops as they are in Hollywood nor merely representations of physical space most directors exploit landscapes only to embellish what is happening in the foreground which is one reason why I like some of John Ford's films he never used Monument Valley as a backdrop for Ford it signified the American soul and the very spirit of his characters westerns are all about basic notions of justice and when I see Monument Valley I somehow start to believe in American justice well we have to say today when I look at Guantanamo Bay for example I have my doubts so do not be do not take it all as it is what was recorded by Paul Cronin sometimes of course you have afterthoughts and your staff to reflect again so things are not always hewn in stone but the general remark about landscapes and about correctly yes and and I think also the the passage about for these earrings and you and you and you end that moment by saying when I write a script I often describe landscapes I have never seen although I had never been to Peru before I started making Aguirre I imagine the atmosphere was a strange precision and when I arrived in the jungle for the first time everything was exactly as I had pictured it It was as if the landscape had no choice they had to fit my imagination and submit themselves to my idea of what they should look like although sometimes I struggled to find actual environments that match those in my head I'm good at reshaping physical landscapes and making them operative for a film they always somehow adapt themselves to the situation's required of them often I try to introduce a certain atmosphere into a landscape using sound and vision to give it a definite character the fact is and this I particularly like the fact is that I can direct escapes just as I do actors and and it's correct yes there's a there's a very fine example from heart of class yeah with the racing clouds I don't know whether we should show it right away but I would I should we should speak about how very often in the general perception and also by fairly intelligent people who believe because it's a very superficial look at what I'm doing in my films they believe that I must be a German romantic now I'm not that's the last thing that that would be on my mind and because of yes of course there is something sometimes a distant echo of of romantic paintings but romanticism does not belong to the to the to that time alone to the romantics alone when I look for example at landscapes 35,000 years ago I shot a film in the show.we cave which was discovered like time capsule some 20 years ago in the most incredible cave paintings the film is called in what is the title of the film the caves cave cave or off children via cable forgotten dream and what is significant there's a beautiful gorge in in these rocks and at the most spectacular place there's a bridge of natural rock over it and it exists since a hundred thousand years roughly and I think how many oh man thirty-two thousand years ago had a sense for this type of landscape romantic landscapes or landscapes of the soul there would be cautious in in calling them romantic landscapes but romanticism does not belong to the romantics alone and this is why we have can we show but before we shall say yes I just want to say hospital when when people and kaspar hauser work yeah yeah when one of the it angers you greatly when people call you romantic that's whilst at the same time there are certain romantic writers who are very close to your heart and I'm thinking particularly of someone like hölderlin but he's not romantic you see that's that's a I wasn't interesting you have let's say interesting thing that we have the good in Schiller and whatever the the classics and then we have the romantics but there are some left over some some right as the best of their time the best of the best data I've never forgotten goethe and schiller will disappear in the abyss of history they are already almost forgotten nobody plays their pieces in theaters anymore we do not read good anymore without a shiver of we shouldn't read that we should rather read Christ who was not Christ boomer who is 20th century and hölderlin who is 22nd 23rd century so they are not belonging to that time so into you and the way you want to rescue them from that yes from the now Schmidt I have to rescue them from you if you say romantic writers like elderly no he is not he's absolutely not by the way completely sometimes deranged deranged language where somebody who literally became insane and lived for 35 years until the end of his life in insanity locked away in a tower and to begin and he writes with a depth and an insight going to the very last frontiers of my language German but then at the at the border lines the language starts to disintegrate many of his poems are fragments where there's only one word five lines down and there's one isolated word then half a second sentence then a piece of the poem again and then it disappears it loses itself so it's it's very very fascinating how some somebody goes to the very very border lines of language it's not a romantic I don't I don't Venna feel that I particularly mean to to be saved on this issue III but III think that hölderlin is often misread of course yes and misread because one wants to fit him in some kind of a school and then said well and you and I once had a conversation about one sentence in hölderlin which i think of on a daily basis which is the poet must not avert his eyes no that's my line is yours it's not held Alenia now sometimes I ascribe certain things to poets herself for example there's a film I made during the fires in Kuwait but the entire every single oil well was burning it's an apocalyptic landscape and I wanted to have an apical epic feeling and the film starts before you see the first image there is a written two line text and it says the collapse of the stellar universe will occur like creation in grandiose splendor and under it Blaise Pascal it sounds very much like les Pascal but of course I invented it in Pascal couldn't have written it any better than then I did and and so I become inventive and I do things that you normally do not ruin movies every but to create to create a feeling to create a cosmic sort of feeling you step into the film at a very high level and and the in the cosmos out there it doesn't look pleasant at all and people found it very funny that I'm saying for example in the film about Bruce about Timothy Treadwell Grizzly Man when he speaks about the wild nature as if it was Walt Disney who created wild nature that you have to hug a bear and you have to sing songs to a bear now this is counterproductive that bear actually ate him at the end and now it's it's actually not funny because nobody should die like that and be besides his girlfriend was also killed and eaten by a bear but he was always speaking about the harmony of the universe and and that everything was beautiful and nice in the wild nature was fluffy and kind to us no it's not like that and I'm saying in my commentary voice here I differ with Treadwell for me nature is chaotic hostile and murderous and that's what you see when when you look at it the cosmos out there there's no such thing as the harmony of spheres which actually is a concept of Greek philosophy that Peter can really started in the Aristotle picked it up later all the way to cap in a Kepler all the way to Kepler is if there were as fears and in there was a harmony the Stars Moon stars were somehow humming were giving a sound that created a harmony inaudible for human ears which I find very interesting because as much outside of our hearing into our vision and I want to show some of those images that particularly important to you if we could look in sequence or shall we look first at it what what I don't think I am number 13 and number 14 sure first number 13 you see I that's a Caspar David Friedrich the wanderer this is a very beautiful and that's really a landscape of the soul can we see number 14 the monk by the the monk at the sea was a very very beautiful image can we see number 12 that's Martin a British number 11 yes some beautiful incredible invented landscapes that have a phenomenal quality but I would like to point out to who is really important for me Hercule sega's number 10 here Hercule saygus that's early Rembrandt time and he was not much taken seriously by any anyone actually he died an alcoholic in in poverty and nobody cared about him and what is left of him is only something like a hundred small prints he experimented with prints and I think only Rembrandt of his contemporary the young Rembrandt took him seriously and bought a canvas painting which now is at the Uffizi and Rembrandt painted some additional things into it an oxcart in some clouds so I wanted Rembrandt wanted to improve Hercule sega's image it's kind of an interesting concept and but cigar scented things that are completely outside of the car known of his time and landscapes that are very very close to my heart but they were done in the 1620s or sea 16:10 1620s can we Co for that's picture Oh for please and yes that's in many ways it's connected to what I read before about Peru that in in some way the landscape you you you recognize that yes boy you saw it and in the case of figures what is so interesting that you told me the other day is that he never saw a mountain yeah he never never left Holland he never saw a mountain II never saw rocks but it's an invented landscape it's eight years old in a very way could we see number five with just rattle a few of them town just very beautiful number six please hear that you still have some idea of landscape number seven which is my all-time favorite or one of my all-time favorites it's phenomenal that this was done four hundred years before its time only in the 20th century you have seen things like this can we see Oh 8 which is also very very intense in visionary and number nine no can i snow number nine is I think he said the one yes ok sure there's you can even recognize a church or something but here the rock in the sky they start to come apart there's something a little bit that reminds me of her Darlene and can we can we see clip number nine please which one okay [Music] just beautiful babies yeah I had some yesterday Bettina a more nasty message [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] okay this is from from Akira the wrath of gods opening shot and you see it's it's very staged and it's very stylized it's a and it is a clear landscape of the soul and and then and there the echoes of Sega's their echoes of what you you had anyway my tribute to heckle SC gets you away yes you would say that yes Kinski didn't take well too well Kinski is not in the first shot I took him out because he was he was screaming at me he wanted to be in close-up in front of the whole army and always his face and he said to me you know you you idiot you get her you whatever the human face is the greatest landscape for any filmmaker and I said no it is not this is a and he wanted to have this was actually shot in Peru near Machu Picchu and it's a it's a ecstatic mountain opposite of the ruins of Machu Picchu and you all probably have seen the postcards of Machu Picchu with the ruins in the foreground then the entire Sugarloaf shaped mountain in the background and he wanted to have that and I said now this is only a postcard this is what commercial would do for a television commercial would do it that way and he was even more angry and I took him out of this shot because I wanted to have an an excerpt of the landscape which has a strange ecstasy something that is outside where humans were landscape steps outside of itself where landscape becomes like a fever dream like an imaginary landscape and of course what you see people coming down there it's it it is not reality it is some something like like an elevated and an ecstasy of reality something something particular about it and and you you caught a moment which was extraordinary a natural moment with those clouds yes I it was a terrible day all in clouds and raining raining raining and you couldn't see a thing and then when everybody was completely exhausted and couldn't take it any longer all of a sudden the clouds opened and they stood on one side of the mountain and then we shot this only once you can do that such a thing the only ones 450 people coming down and llamas and cannons and all pigs all sorts of things and it's too steep too slippery and quite a few people had vertical they would and it was obviously the people from the highlands strangely enough we had Native people Quechua speaking people who came from an altitude over 4000 meter and they had vertigo 5 6 7 I tied them with a rope to a bush so in there said we bring you down later when the shot is done so you have to be physical when you do something like this and it's always always always physical experience with landscapes and yet something something really doomed even when you see this shot you know you immediately get the feeling that this arm it is sending there is doomed they all disappear without a trace at the end of the film no wonder that that would doom spoke to you yes of course it was it came yeah and I described certain things of the landscape that I had never seen I had no no real idea how chun-li really looked like and I learned very quickly how to give it a quality equality of fever dreams and how to translate that onto a screen is a strange and complex phenomenon and I cannot fully describe how I do it and sometimes I I have minor conflicts with cinematographers because I want to stylize it in a certain way and they want to do it in a conventional way to make landscape look beautiful like yes and and whenever there is a sunset and I noticed that the sunset is behind my actors I turn it 180 degrees away from the sunset so that the cinematographer who loves the sunset in the background doesn't get it there's never a sunset in any of my films not completely correct I think one says there is a sunset I think it's a good moment to bring up a recent experience you had in Switzerland where you went to the saram oh yeah yeah I was interesting because you it seems to have struck you in yes I was invited to set him to the Large Hadron Collider by scientists and I could see a lot because a hard-on Collider and all the main cyclotrons in in repair and refurbishing and upgrading so for two years they have them sitting idle and you can really see them and walk around and and the scientists really tell you those who do these experiments that the cosmos out there is not just unfriendly it's so hostile that we cannot even imagine it and just recently a week ago we saw the first photo of a black hole which was very very complex sort of array of telescopes around the world who combined their observations at the same moment it had to be arranged into into one image and in what's out there is so phenomenally unfriendly so phenomenally hostile is even beyond our imagination and it's it's just extraordinary and the kind of tools that they're using is it's really wonderful for me to see and to understand for example when they have a collision of two particles and they have detectors and the particles crash into each other with extreme energies very close to the speed of light and the events are taking place in extreme short times so they make their observations in milliseconds or less than milliseconds and the complete release truck me a set they record a millisecond with their computers and in their detectors a millisecond is one thousandth of a second and what they record the data they record in 1000 of a second records more data than every single library in the world put together into one millisecond and it's really going to limits of what we can do and it I find it extraordinary and and that may be one of the reasons that the that it interests you so much because it goes to the limit of what we can understand of what we yes brother but we can understand very simple things for example I was always interested in time that present does not exist but let's only past in future you see when I when I reach out for the class in there lift it when I touch it it's already the past it it happened in the past second and their love lifted up that's already also past already when I drink from it and in this only only left is the future this you can bring it down when where I the last millimeter before I touch the glass it's already past in the very first moment when I touch the glass is already past with us that leave us it leaves us with the notion that you can you can explain that to a comedy on man somebody 30,000 years ago you do not need to be a scientist where it does leave us is that we understand that human perception of time is an illusion it is an illusion we we only have passed in future and every child and every Aborigine in Australia who has not done science will understand that it's as simple as that and yet our perception of time we have now machinery that records time to fractions of seconds and it's one by the power of minus fourteen meaning zero point and then 14 zeros ones one second it's a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second can be recorded and and when you ask why why do we need to do that the answer is very simple the world out there you including probably most of you including asking Boulder Colorado which has his most precise atomic clock more than a billion time from per minute for the right time because all our GPS all our GPS measuring has to do with time how much time it takes to reach a satellite and reach a moving car because object in moving slows time down and that's a variant and they can measure to such details that are almost impossible to imagine and in what they tell you is according to Einstein and it can be proven in practical terms when I have my wristwatch here and I move it away from a huge mass the mass of Earth planet Earth and I move it away from the center of the earth only one meter just moving my my wristwatch it will go slower but biased the tiniest trillions of trillions of children's of a second and they can measure it they can measure today how much slower my wristwatch is moving because I move it away from a big mass it is measurable now and I find it very very fascinating do you find that in all these attempts to measure we're also losing something of our humanity not really because GPS is something very useful and but the orientation in space and orientation people with the GPS still know how to find their way on a map they don't and I have never used a GPS myself and I'm using maps and I have a very good sense for for directions so it's but that comes when you travel on foot that you understand you read landscapes you read the obstacles you read distance is much better than using GPS I would not say that we are losing we are actually understanding much more about the universe out there what what is the fate of the universe how badly is our planet ending at some time in the far far far future how bad is it really looking out there and how stupid inappropriate is an idea to colonize another planet like Mars it's fine that we are going there with space probe is scientists fine but you do not colonize Mars after you have depleted our planet Earth from fresh water and breathable air and vegetables that are growing and when we have grazed like locust everything empty then we move on to the next one you see we shouldn't do that we shouldn't contemplate it we should keep our planet inhabitable that should be our our effort and and the colonization of Mars is a technical utopia anyway the same way the twentieth century has given us has shown us that demise and has been the manifestation of the demise of social utopias like communism and like socialism and so the dream paradise on earth it all crumbled and fell in our our century will inevitably bring the demise of technological utopias immortality for example it's a it's an absurd it's an absurd idea which will be put to rest while this century is still going on in the next 80 years it will be nobody will speak about it any more in the next 78 years nobody will speak about colonization of Mars anymore or traveling to other stars they're simply too far were contact with extraterrestrials fine yes we won't make contact because if if ever a signal is coming at us it will take 220 million years until our answer comes back or it will be hundred eighty thousand only years until we until our answer reaches in a bit too late if they too late and they won't speak English anyway so and they may be very slimy and strange creatures I remember a conversation we had many many years ago which we entitled was the 20th century a mistake yes what title would we give to to this century now well I think what's interesting is to contemplate the future that assault of the future upon the rest of the time say more let's leave it like that the assault of the future upon the rest of the time we had some good titles like ecstasy and terror in the mind of God you know and and when we came up with this title I said to vanna maybe we should say a little bit more and he said absolutely not yeah let me leave here I doubt so figuring out a little bit more landscapes her soul the relationship between imagination and childhood what the relationship might be between landscapes of the soul and imagination and thinking particularly of something you once described to me and I think you decide now is my hölderlin quotation which is yours I'm a bit worried but you once described to me your first experience eating an orange when you were five or six years old and how amazing you have a landscape an orange was to you at that age yes oranges didn't exist we had no running water we had electricity sometimes we had no cinema I didn't know what cinema was I didn't know what an orange was and I I was in hospital when I was six or so for a week and I they gave me an orange and I didn't know what it was and it took me a day until I figured out that he had to peel it and then there are these segments inside and I took the skin off and they're this tiny little piece ascetic that I aligned and hold the thing together and I I studied it for a long time and it was like a strange universe something and and I had the feeling it could be eaten and I tried very very carefully to suck on it a little bit and it was tasty but first experience of the world was something else my mother ripped my older brother and me out of bed in the middle of the night it was still winter and she carried us up on the slope and she said boys I had to wake you up the city of rosenheim is burning it was just in the last days of the war and there must have been just two and a half years old and I remember at the end of the valley the sky since wasn't home is 40 kilometers away you didn't see fire or so earth the entire night sky was illuminated red and orange and it was slowly pulsing in this pausing light I always remember very vividly and it made me curious about the world and I knew the world out there was dangerous the entire city was burning and I didn't even know what a what a city was but I knew it was many people in many houses in an entire city was burning so and and of course that's a mythical image it makes you curious about what is the world about where are other dangers what what is going on here and of course behind the this little farmhouse where we lived was a creek and then a ravine in the waterfall this was a very mythical sort of waterfall very savage very very ancient never any tourists went there they it was you see it from outside here to climbed in the ravine and then you saw the waterfall so those those are elements that in a way shaped my understanding of images of landscapes that that they'd have certain qualities that have certain elements of of a child's soul and they come back to haunt you now yes not haunting me but I enjoy to discover landscape and landscapes and shape them and and discover detect things in the landscapes that nobody else would search for find remember in Antarctica the film encounters at the end of the world and there's something very very strange under the very South Pole I think we have a clip of that Stewie but shall shall we show that one it is no no no no seven encounters I've known umber sever frozen remember seven number seven can we show number seven please [Music] and when we are gone what will happen thousands of years from now in the future will there be alien archaeologists from a mother I think slightly agree on what we were doing at the South Pole [Music] they descend into the towers that we had dark deep under the power it is still minus 70 degrees here and that's why this place has outlived all the large cities in the world they walk on and on [Music] [Music] and then this as if we had wanted to leave one remnant of our presence on this planet they would find a frozen sturgeon mysteriously hidden away beneath the mathematically precise true southbound [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] they stash it back away into its frozen shrine for another eternity and then they find more memories of a loved one screen as if the human race wanted to preserve at least some lost beauty of this earth they left this framed in a garland of frozen popcorn so yes it's a very strange find and nobody else being at the South Pole would would look out I heard that there was a frozen sturgeon somewhere very deep in the ice it's somebody from the kitchen apparently stole it and put it in a shrine and put frozen car a frozen garland of popcorn around it so it's the human imagination is it's very strange sometimes and and I tried to find these images I try to to make it my own and I reflect myself in those actually when I say the the mathematical precise true South Pole since the ice of the South Pole is about three three kilometers thick and it's moving it's moving one or two meters each year probably by today it's something like 15 or 20 meters of the very mathematical South Pole it's shifting it's the ice is actually moving and drifting towards the ocean and and it's the kind of straight strangeness that sounds and looks very familiar to me as if as if it had been there for a very long time yes and it will stay for a very long time it if if they leave the sturgeon in this rain it it will probably be discovered by archaeologists of the future five thousand years from now they might be our aliens may come and discover the frozen sturgeon and they have to to figure out what to do with it and this whole concept of alienists is in a way very fascinating for me because out there it's I don't think they're as much of alien out there although we know that exoplanets are inhabitable quite quite many inhabitable places for life-forms and and we can assume that that somewhere there is life but life informs that we do not know how it looks like maybe microbes maybe bacteria maybe even strange snails or you do not know what and it's we can assume that there is some life out there because we share the same history with the universe we share the same physics and we share the same chemistry with a universe so there's a probability that's they are that this but I don't find it that interesting we can assume yes there are some life-forms out there we will we will never reach it because it's too far everything out there where you find in habitable planets somewhere in our galaxy is at least 25,000 light-years away 400 or four thousand light-years which means you have to travel hundreds of thousands of years which you cannot is a human being it doesn't interest you that much I think it's it probably would be a correct assumption to make that what interests you perhaps more as a return to to the past I remember when we when we spoke once about the inheritance you felt you received from your grandfather the archaeologist and you you spoke you spoke very movingly about kusa disease and particularly the the melian that dialogue yeah well but I spoke about it male of satire log between Athens in the island of Melos in tequila DS is is something which was very appropriate and almost a copy of what happened with Greek monetary crisis the forces from outside including unfortunately Germany who didn't play a very elegant role in all this super imposing on like the Athenians on the island of Melos enforcing their rules indeed forcing the supremacy and and so not not very pleasant and I pointed out yes we can look into into the past and find some starting startling similarities when when you look into into the conquest of New Spain of of the Americas Cortes and in light of course Pizarro and there's some sort of a symmetry symmetry of myth for the at stakes the Spaniards arriving where some creatures that descended from the clouds godlike creatures who wrote on miraculous stags meaning on horses and they had firearms had created Sunday and lightning that killed off their men their soldiers so and they believed there were gods that descended from the clouds predicted actually in some ancient predictions and the symmetry of this myth included all the also the Spaniards the Spaniards when they saw the valley of Mexico which still was a lake at their time and they descended between the two volcanoes Popocatepetl and it's a Seattle and they saw it and Bernardi Austin Castillo a foot man of Cortes he writes in his wonderful book the conquest of New Spain he writes said they were marveling and stopped as if this was out of a fairy tale as if it was out of the book of amatis some sort of late medieval fairytales invented cities celestial cities invented cities so there was a certain symmetry of myth and I I believe that it was actually probably not contest because today I tried to find it the instructions said he had I think included that he had to look out for he had to look out for the Fountain of Youth which actually is not in the instructions I have to look into Columbus I think the instructions for Columbus was if you find land look out for the Fountain of Youth and those were the official instructions for him among other things converting converting the natives to to the true faith and actually I'm planning a film on meteorites it may contain some life forms like bacteria mono cellular structures what if an alien landed hint there is a scientist who is actually a priest in the Vatican and we want to ask him if an alien steps in front of you like out of Star Wars with little antennae there in the screechy little voice would you baptize him it really interests me what what does a church tell us how do we deal with why does this interest you because it interests me because we baptize the alien that came across the Western world when Columbus discovered some islands in the Bahamas and they immediately baptized and raped and took the gold so that's a very very strange encounter so there were always murderous and strange and in a way I can't describe it what it is but it it captures my imagination what what is it that's so strange what we are doing with the alien each time we talk then it seems to me more and more that your interests the depths of your interest lie firmly in an appreciation and an understanding of history not only its its so I would be corrected but yeah yes surely history is always something that's totally fascinating but exploring the world and understanding and reading the world right to understand what is going on and how how the world is shaped and what is going on where do we live what is our environment I know Ben that's that's in a way in no I want you to go there because I knows this I know when when we saw each other in Los Angeles and our current president gave his speech to the nation you were you were angry at me for not having heard it for not having listened to it and you said to me how can you possibly you know understand the world at the present time if you don't pay attention to that so and and I I pay attention to to the bizarre things that you see on television I look at the most bizarre sometimes at some game shows I look at WrestleMania I look at I look at what what is Trump saying to the to the general public and fascinated by what is going on and you must not avert your eyes the poet must know the vertices of elderly wood it was as I would say and not averting your eyes and looking looking at world as it is in all its strangeness and cruelty and in its in its marvel and that's where equality comes into my films a quality of awe of something that illuminates us something that struck strikes us I've never seen anything like this sublime in some way yes sometimes it elevates us into recognition of of something that comes close to truth which has always been very important to me what is truth and we cannot describe it and nobody knows exactly except the Pope he there's there's some sort of the truths of faith but but I I would not fully buy it I buy it when I look at medieval mystics late medieval mystics who experienced certain truths in in certain illuminations in ecstasy's and this is why I've termed the expression except the ex ecstasy of truth the ecstatic truth but sometimes it's just the very normal terrifying look at it the world as it is and there's a sometimes a strange terror and strange illumination in it and conquest of the useless is full of it yes and also you hear you hear Venice prose here what you hear here these two passages it is to Kuyper in Peru in de Chagny 7th of July 1980 an entire school of small fishes leaped out of the water as our boat passed I saw a stuffed alligator I actually saw it it's not like the frozen sturgeon I saw it I saw a stuffed alligator standing right supported by its tail and singing to the accompaniment of a guitar the alligator was also wearing sunglasses a young man was holding five small alligators by the head and wanted to tell them and wanted to sell them to me at first I thought they were dead because they were drooping but it was probably from exhaustion because a seller insisted on demonstrating how much life was left in them by holding his lit cigarette lighter to their tails which made them risk in like snakes a young woman was sucking a new poem piglet that had been orphaned once the pigs are fully grown saddle bags are hitched on their backs for loads and then off they go that's pure invention in this case the Indian women like gold teeth the powers of heaven powerless against the jungly the night was quiet only the stars sang far off a few stars came shooting down Varga a naked little Indian boy with a distended stomach not yet able to speak was pushed toward me among the silent of service another child about five asked whether I wanted him little vogner did not have either a father or a mother only his shadow so it's just looking at what the world is all about and it's with a very few with a very few moments that the pigs are settled with saddlebags and off they go into the distance all the rest is precise observation with all of a sudden is interspersed with fantasy but I remember the little boy naked and with a with a big belly of because he had apparently he was undernourished and and they wanted to sell him to me and give him to me to adopt him whether I wanted little and his name was Varna like Richard Wagner it's very very beautiful and strange shall we show the last scene of Aguirre okay yes because it's yeah let's try think so yeah okay and it is number you have to give us mm you'll hear the LA it's number ten okay a little smear machine they'd go into a ship on and talk about how long they even not really that the dysfunction call my advice should be show and they have reactance noise bunion in the hot tub only have you defeat the in Sicilian the under sticker of the data [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] about that that was a wonderful wild story and of course that can be changed only once gets all got us via the mana idler talked I hadn't very low water and meaty area Heights the dynasty to hunt for the lady had a disease to the earth so summer seemed together vaguely veggies and dancin continent house rule over this entire continent we are not even hold out he's been dead some cotton the wrath of God there's odds disbelief who else is with you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] well this this landscape which is only a fever dream now and inhabited only in instead of human being says only little monkeys left in death human beings on this raft it it has its quality I think not only the image of the landscape in the monkeys in the strangeness but also the strangeness of speech it has to do how language how language transforms the lens the landscape into something like a fever dream and that's something that I have learned over the years as a filmmaker how to how to declare make certain declarations it all of a sudden intensify a landscape and they've done it quite often it's it's a common it's a common denominator you find it quite off of course my films are lots of storytelling and a lot of events and acting and music and and whatever by the way it's not only speech it's all the music that transforms what what we are seeing here you in in conquest of the useless you you write passionately about these fever dreams yes I told but but they are not always just fever dream Sara they're what I see and it's it sounds like a fever dream but I've I've actually seen it I've seen it and experienced it that doesn't make it less of a fever dream that's correct yes yes but I have a way to discover I have a way to discover there's certain essence a certain essence of a situation of a landscape of a character and that's fundamentally what is going on in real cinema and you do not see it that often when when you look at movies of the of the film industry like Hollywood there are in two different things yes a they actually are very much now into this fantasy films meaning it's pure pure imaginations flying dragons and are you against them no no it's they are actually going back to forms of narrations and elements of storytelling that we have in Beowulf for example in that we have in old Nordic sagas and that we have all the way back to Roman and Greek antiquity but it's mostly very much what you see elements of 9th 10th 11th or so century in in the Germanic world that means elfs dragons evil dwarves you just you name it and I remember one day when you you read all the dwarf yeah in the in the in the poetic Edda it's it's a wonderful I highly recommend you have to read the old the poetic Edda which was collected these poems were collected in the 12th 13th century but they date back to much earlier times they date back to the 5th some of it refers to events in the 5th 6th century or maybe because it's an oral tradition maybe even deepen into time we do not know and in one of the first the very first thing is the vision of the crs the prophecy of the crs all of a sudden the poem starts to name that wharfs and then that wharfs were created and they were named and then the it's it's verse after verse names of Dwarfs eighteen over 80 names of dwarfs which are the most incredible rapper song when you read it quickly and it's it's just incredible and some of the scholars thought that this was an interpolation and doesn't belong there and took it out and put it in an appendix so I think is wrong it's not an abomination it's an abomination they are too much into academia and they should be banished from ever touching that Adar I have touched it I actually touched it twice in my life I had it it's like the Dead Sea Scrolls for Israel what Iceland has is I remember I remember we were invited once to to to go to Iceland do you remember what you said he said I will go under one condition that we can that we speak for five consecutive hours if one day we'll do it we won't speak for five four five more hours I promise you but then I what I can shall maybe I I think the the final clip we should show is into the inferno or not it set with Islandia yes okay let's show I think we should be told and then I have one well I have one bonus and a very show number 12 yes actually ice landed and reciting some of the poetic Edda and and it's a way I'm speaking and reciting because I have some sort of my own stage voice and I do have my own voice when I'm playing for example a villain you love children in Czech reach or other things now in the new Mandalorian in the continuation of the star Boris Elias more roll and again dear I'm not the the baddest badass bad guy but some somehow a sinister character and I'm good at that in the kind of voice but you enjoyed playing the bad guy of course because I'm good I'm good as a bad guy on camera I mean on the screen otherwise I'm a very friendly person in private here my life will testify that I'm a fluffy husband but we should I will say one thing when you get home tonight and have trouble sleeping I highly recommend to you one thing I asked vana to do a voiceover once of a so to speak children's book called I think I can say a saying they're grown-ups here they're grown I mean you know in America you would have to put dot dot dot but I'll say it here it was written with that title yeah go the to sleep and it's a father who just can't get his children to go the to sleep so that's a ran against and the mountains and the moon and go the to sleep in there and it goes up just let me say I did it for you yes yeah you did it for me I played it in the dark before an event on that book I highly recommend you go home put yourself under blankets and play it quite loud it might it might not do the right effect and here the clip is from into the infernal number twelve fairly recent film clip number twelve and I'm reading from the poetic Edda [Music] these occurrences yeah I have this one I send us there is a tax effective when he finds the spirit of the people it exists only my singing - sound is a bit for Iceland it is as important as they say scrolls are desired by the Codex was given as a present to the King of Denmark by an Icelandic bishop in the 17th century hence its name the royal codex or codex Aegeus in 1971 denmark returned it to iceland knowing that it constituted the soul of the country the codex was put on denmarks largest battleship and escorted by a whole fleet no amount of money in the world would be enough to purchase this manuscript from Iceland although it is bettered and crumbled and filled with holes in the opening passage called the prophecy of the Cirrus there is an apocalyptic vision of the end of the pagan gods this seems to describe a huge volcanic event needs the sea the land sinkers the Sun dhimmis from the heavens for the fair bright stars gusset forests steam and cutting fire - very heavens or the hurtling flames the fates I fathom yet farther I see of the mighty gods the engulfing doom comes the darksome dragon flying nice hawk upwards from the mesa fells he bears in his opinions as the planes hero flies naked Parks's now he will sink [Applause] [Music] [Applause] that landscape is just so extraordinary yeah it's very beautiful and terrifying and of course we know that it's under us everywhere even under the sea beds it's all what you see at some points it's erupting and it becomes visible and and I like to to see where it becomes visible because it it has a sense of awe the sense of wonder and actually in the film itself I'm commenting it in a way that National Geographic would ever never ever allow they would take the film away from me at the end my commentary says while I'm showing this kind of lava flows and explosions and so I'm I'm saying it this lava this burning of glowing magma is everywhere and us under all continents under the sea beds in this ferocious ferocious hostile nature is completely uninterested and then I'm saying in scurrying roaches reptiles and vapid humans alike I love to say things like you know you do you know I I know you know here it is no I know you do and and before then read the final passage to things because you you love saying such things and you've loved saying them I would say possibly your entire life one thing you never visited the Acropolis really no I did I actually did I it's very strange it's hard to get me into a museum I have a problem to get over the threshold and I don't know exactly what it is maybe the kind of regulated or the regulator's the kind of performative structure of museum and and also I think Bob Dylan's in a song says that in the museum eternity is at trial this kind of trial of eternity which is also a worry of mine and and it's not-- nobody believes me as a young kid when I was first time in in Greece when I was 16 17 I I always passed through at Athens and I would go to the island of Crete I would go to the island of Kos and I always passed by and I saw the Acropolis and I said no I'm not going up there I'm not going up there and I have no idea why and I think 13 times I was in Athens and only on the fourteenth time I went up to the Acropolis but I it was right after the military coup d'etat and the borders were just opened no flights yet so I drove a car 2,200 kilometers from Munich day and night I drove I slept two hours falling on me on the passenger seat and slept I arrived in Athens and it was 5:00 in the morning just like started to come up and and I at that time you could park under the Acropolis in the car and I parked and I said I should see it but it opened only at 8 it 8 o'clock they opened and there was the first one and the Acropolis hardly any anyone came but I was so tired I set between two of the columns and fell asleep and I slept maybe 15 or 20 minutes and then I was rudely woken up and expelled from the Acropolis by guards because I thought I was a homeless a hobo a vagabond who wanted to sleep up there would you go back I was back once but briefly but I saw the Acropolis this morning in in the hail and I thought this was wonderful this was really good to see it thunder lightning hail in the Acropolis there that's just and it was good to see troll town orchestrated by you in a way yes I hope let's let's look at clip number 20 and then when I will do a reading it's an unfinished country it's still pretty historical the only thing that is lacking is the dinosaurs here it's like a curse weighing on an entire landscape and whoever goes too deep into this has his share of that curse so we are cursed with what we are doing here it's a land that God if he exists his has created in anger it's the only land where where creation is unfinished yet taking a close look at it what's around us there is some sort of a harmony it is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder and we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle we in comparison to that enormous articulation we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel a cheap novel and we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication overwhelming growth and overwhelming lack of order even the the stars up here in the in the sky look like a mess there is no harmony in the universe we have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no real harmony as we have conceived it but when I say this I say this all full of admiration for the changi it is not that I hate it I love it I love it very much but I love it against my better judgment a little bit it cut a little bit it says I love it against my better judgment yeah well it's the clip is from a film from les blank burden of Dreams he actually took the title from me we spoke about title sent and he picked it up for me it to meet only shows that I have been working for a long time I was still a very young man when it was a time when that it fits corralled oh and when you see photos when I did signs of life I look like a schoolboy and I have ploughed on and I have never never looked really back this is always strange when I look back at myself I I do I personally do not like it that much but we are showing it here what always about it I don't like self-reflection you see some animals there are some animals when you put a mirror at them they immediately shy away and and go away they your animals who do not like their mirror image indeed I know you and I have had a few conversations about psychoanalysis in there yeah yeah I think psychoanalysis is one among other monumental mistakes is one of the monumental mistakes of the 20th century of course it has its roots in the 19th or even before but but it has not done good to anyone and very much compared yeah it doesn't do good if we self reflect ourselves if we shed light into the deepest recesses of ourselves we shouldn't do that it's unhealthy and psychoanalysis is a monumental mistake and and in the same way in a way it is related I keep comparing it with a Spanish Inquisition where you were no it's it's a legitimate comparison because in the Spanish Inquisition in order to root out to weed out remaining elements of Muslim faith from Spain after the reconquest you were forced and sometimes forced under torture to confess to the deepest elements of your face you had to explain you had to do the outer dha'fi you had to reveal the nature the deepest nature of your religious belief and it was equally equally disastrous it hasn't done good to anyone neither the inquisitors nor the tortured ones so and it's legitimate to take it as an example and I keep thinking about a single hour in New York for example for a psychiatrist costs not under not under $200 and I keep thinking how many good stakes that would would be I would prefer the stakes instead of the psychiatrist so I have to rent against them because I'm so much against and I what I said when I when I proposed this idea of making their own asus foundation even more global and bringing it to los angeles I said two things that came directly from you one way you said that New York is essentially a city where they consume culture and LA is a culture as a city where they create culture yes and not only culture they also create for example in the perimeter of the city itself the reusable rockets by SpaceX are being built in the town Tesla cars you have it all computers or let's say the internet started in Los Angeles you have a movie yes I did a movie lo and behold but also he's also the other line that has mattered to me greatly and it is yours this I do know is when I asked you once what culture was you said culture is a collective agitation of the mind yes it is and you have to look behind the glitz and glamour of Hollywood and then they would immediately understand it's a city of great excitement about mathematics it's a great excitement about literature music things get done there new ideas tested and then spread out to the entire world like the internet started there like much of the computers although that's further north Silicon Valley but video gamers collective dreams of the world in terms of the Hollywood cinema not my cup of tea but still it's created there and and all the idiocies all the stupidities are from there like the crazy sects like Scientology or like yoga classes or like aerobic studios or like you just name it I remember last time you said breast implants yeah not only that I mean you see it's terrible if you if you go to a party in in Los Angeles you see total human installations women with artificial breasts like this and and 25 facelifts and men have started it as well now it's very very frightening you know I so frightening and I I remember on one board I was on the some of the board members just you know I wanted to ask them if they could could blink they cannot you know they cannot wink anymore they cannot laugh because the face is so stretched that they that they only have one robotic expression and that's about it then I can you finish the evening by reading an uplifting page okay yes let's go back to the time of Fitzcarraldo and they actually returned to the place much later some 20 years later and I wanted to see what was left we had cut us a swath of jangly for moving the ship of a hill and it was a heavy ship it was a real steamboat in one single piece and certain things in in the drama of what was happening there and drama I mean drama of doing something that has never been done in technical history an object of that size and of that weight in one singing piece has never been moved over a mountain so we had to invent and I had to invent methods how to do it actually in the under solar Neolithic methods how we did it and in all the turmoil of running into a border war with Peru between Peru and Ecuador when I came for 1100 people was attacked and burned down and we had two plane crashes and we had the leading character falling ill after half the film was shot and he was flown out chasing robots he was flown out to the States and his medical doctors wouldn't allow him to return to the tongue so and at that time Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones was still part of the of the acting team and I had I said to him you have to go because we have only three weeks left on your contract and even if I have a new actor tomorrow it's not time enough to do everything with you so he had to go on the world tour with the Rolling Stones so there were there were massive massive disasters and then I returned and nothing there was no trace of us not a single post we had perhaps like the native people would have and thatched roofs and the floors were made of flexible bark and there was not even a nail that you could find where we had cut the Johnny some 4050 metres wide was completely overgrown again you could not tell where it was it was all of a sudden everything that I did was reclaimed by forests and by rotting and by what what nature does to us and and of course I had overlooked quite a few things and of course what came to me was at that time my last consolation was was writing was words for others last consolation would be either drugs or religion or whatever for me it was always always words it was texts I dug myself into writing Diaries and tiny tiny at that I wish I could show you now the most diminutive miniature handwriting yeah my handwriting is of totally normal size but at that time it's ranked to microscopic and I had the sharpest pens imaginable I could for example write 1012 pages of text on half on half a page of this book so it's and you could only decipher it with a magnifying glass a jewelers for example are using they they have glasses and then they flip some magnifying thing and they look at diamonds and like that I could decipher it and it took me twenty six years until I was capable to even touch it and look into it and read it's big partly for the reason you were mentioning of looking back no I didn't want I tried it once and I could read only a few pages and it was so such a horror for me that I said I will never read it and my wife who is actually sitting here she said to me she said to me you have to address it you have to address it because when you are dead some idiot will eventually get hold of the text and try to decipher it and decipher it wrongly and not edit a few things out that shouldn't be in it and it would be a book of an idiot if you do not address it yourself you have to do it so 26 years after I wrote these texts I went into it and all of a sudden it was very easy it's completely easy and I typed it out and of course deleted things and edited a few things I smelled no doubt about that and thank you Lena yes she's here and she has been a very good influence on those things here I read just towards the end they are America's that I was assured had been contacted long since there was actually an incident where a nun contact they tried much further upstreams ten days travel upstream in the mountains they had refused any contact with white civilizations and they had shot with very large arrows two meters long arrows and as I have no metal with razor-sharp bamboo arrow tips a head shot at three of our people who were native people who were further upstream doing fishing for us and a man was shot through the throat and the arrow head was still sticking through his throat it had split his shoulder up meant stuck in his throat and stuck in the other shoulder so it rested there and the woman was hit three by three arrows and survived we had to operate them on the kitchen table in the middle of nowhere because if we had transported them any further they would have died inevitably they were dying and we had to operate and I was assisting operations by with a torch light illuminating the the pelvis cavity of the woman that was operated on her abdomen and with the other hand I had mosquito repellant to spray clouds of mosquitoes away that wanted to enter there as well so that was a daily kind of stuff in the Americas was he the tribe this small tribal group that had done the attack the urban workers I was assured had been contacted long since and had been tamed into good Peruvians I found not a trace of either our camps even after careful search not a nail not a post not even a hole were post had been the strip we had clear it was completely overgrown as if we had never been there only the forest was a lighter green there if you knew where we had dragged the ship over the mountain but the vegetation had grown up into its previous up to its previous height it was midday and very still I looked around because everything was so motionless I recognize that jungle is something familiar something I had inside me and I knew that I loved it yet against my better judgment then words came back to me that had been circling swirling inside me through all these years Harken heifer hoarfrost denizens of the crag will oh the wisp hogwash uncouth float some fiend only now did it seem as though I could escape from the world vortex of words something struck me a change that actually was no change at all I had simply not noticed it when I was working there there had been an odd tension hovering over the huts a brooding hostility the native families hardly had any contact with each other as if a few drained among them but I had always overlooked that somehow or denied it only the children had played together now as I made my way past the huts and asked for directions it was hardly possible to get one family to acknowledge another the seething hatred was undeniable as if something like a climate of vengeance prevailed from Hut to Hut from family to family from clan to clan I looked around and there was such anger manifesting the same seething hatred wrathful and steaming while the river flowed by in majestic indifference and scornful condescension ignoring everything the plight of man the burden of Dreams in the torments of time than a hassle [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Onassis Foundation

Views: 18,180

Keywords: Werner Herzog, onassis, onassis foundation, Paul Holdengräber, onassis stegi, stegi, talk, filmmaker, Aguirre, grizzly man, interview, discussion, onassis channel, athens

Id: SSeniqta-Mc

Length: 136min 29sec (8189 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020