I am torn where to direct my filmic attention on September 5: the electrifying energy on the eve of TIFF 2012 or the grandmaster of New German Cinema, Werner Herzog, turning 70. Let's celebrate him early then (as it is my birthday today and I am about to have cake anyway).
It seems only right to pay homage to his physicality and prowess, going strong into his 8th decade (and his 7th decade of filmmaking). I actually had to do the math several times to believe it: yes, Werner Herzog Stipetić, born in Bavaria in 1942, into the bombing raids at the height of World War II. In 2003, I was lucky enough to do an interview with Herzog for Point of View magazine entitled "Werner Herzog: The Filmmaker as Athlete" on the occasion of the release of Wheel of Time as well as his Outstanding Achievement Award at Hot Docs that year. Here is an excerpt from that interview that still holds true (and reveals his inimitable natural swagger).
How does a self-proclaimed athlete filmmaker translate the essence of spirituality, of the ethereal mandala into film? How does a Western filmmaker, who says of himself that he is never detached, work in a culture where attachment is regarded to be the root of suffering? POV wanted to know the answer to these and a myriad of other questions. Herzog didn’t disappoint us. He proved to be as open and baffling, as contentious and engaging as his reputation has made him out to be.
Jutta Brendemühl: A lot of your work seems infused by the mythical, transcendental. Do you have some sort of metaphysical set of beliefs that comes to work in your films?
Werner Herzog: No.
JB: Are you detached from these questions, even in a film like “Wheel of Time”?
WH: No, I’m physical, not really metaphysical. I’m an athlete, or I used to be an athlete.
JB: …thus also the fascination with the mountains… Related to that I wanted to ask you about the cross-cultural experience. You were ((in Tibet)) as a Western filmmaker and you approach these people that, in a way, live in a different universe. Where are you between closeness and detachment when you do these kinds of projects with very different cultures?
WH: I’m never detached, I’m always --and this is a very good example-- very, very close, and I’m physically curious and you see how the camera immerses itself in the mayhem of crowds of pilgrims struggling over some consecrated dumplings. Anyone else would have shot it from a tripod, from some distance with a long lens. Whenever there was mayhem and piling up of scrambling pilgrims and broken bones (there were literally severely injured people on the ground), the camera always sticks right into it, physically. And it only does so because I’m so curious and I’m not detached. I’m not distant. I want to go to the very centre of the mayhem.
JB: In one shot, there's the cameraman’s thumb in the picture…
WH: That’s the cinematographer's. Yes, I left it in because some fragment of one of these dumplings flew right at the lens and you see the thumb of the cinematographer, clearing the lens. But he keeps on filming. There’s a certain bravado (laughs). ...
Many happy returns, lieber Werner Herzog! Looking forward to the next film, which he is of course already working on, as he told me at his last Berlinale premiere earlier this year. I will entitle our next interview "Werner Herzog: At the Centre of Mayhem".
To have you celebrate along with Herzog, we will raffle 7 DVDs by/with/about Werner Herzog for 7 lucky winners (1 DVD each). To enter, please email us at arts@toronto.goethe.org until 7 September and tell us how you heard about this blog! Only the winners will be notified (by the end of September). Viel Glück!
by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto
