SUMMER 2006
CALLS OF THE WILD: WERNER HERZOG IN FOUR PARTS
AUG 18-31
When one of the actors took ill and the production of FITZCARALDO suffered a minor setback, maverick filmmaker Werner Herzog declared "If I abandon this project I would be a man without dreams and I don't want to live like that: I live my life or I end my life with this project." Fortunately for us Herzog finished the film, which became an international sensation both for its content and its novel approach to filmmaking. Legend has it that Herzog's producer begged him not to continue with the work because of the lives he was placing in jeopardy. Herzog in his calm German accent responded with a simple but maddening question, How many lives would be at risk? Herzog is as much a state of mind as he is a filmmaker. Herzog is clearly a man willing to tackle the call
of the wild, whether embodied in the form of Klaus Kinski, whose combative nature charges the rarely-seen COBRA VERDE, or in the Kuwait desert, as witnessed in the suddenly timely documentary, LESSONS OF DARKNESS. Perhaps in his latest outings he attempts to tame his wild side. With WHEEL OF TIME, Herzog's mind melds with the Buddhist spirituality of Tibet, and in his latest eco-fable WILD BLUE YONDER, he muses about vacating the planet we may very well have already destroyed. CALL OF THE WILD presents Herzog as he was, as he is, and perhaps as he always will be - a force of nature.
Attend all the films in CALLS OF THE WILD: WERNER HERZOG IN FOUR PARTS with the Series Pass: $20/$12 NWFF members.
AUG 18-31 Fri-Thurs at 7, 9:00pm
TWO WEEKS!
WILD BLUE YONDER
(Werner Herzog, UK/USA/France/Germany, 2005, 35mm, 81 min.)
SEATTLE THEATRICAL PREMIERE!
Werner Herzog's latest film is a typically inspired union of cinematic bravado and lunacy, a mockumentary ostensibly about a disgruntled alien's reminiscences of the long journey from the Andromeda galaxy to earth. Although the alien is played with crazy- eyed conviction by Brad Dourif, the whole exercise is really an excuse to reinvent a series of ethereally beautiful zero-gravity sequences shot during a NASA space shuttle mission and some extraordinary Arctic underwater diving scenes, all set to a hypnotic score of Sardinian polyphonic harmonies.
"The director calls the film a "science-fiction fantasy," but it's really a languid meditation on human impermanence." BOSTON GLOBE
AUG 18-21 Fri-Mon at 5, 7:15, 9:30pm
NEW 35MM PRINT!
COBRA VERDE
(Werner Herzog, Germany, 1987, 35mm, 111 min.)
SEATTLE PREMIERE!
This was the last of the legendary, combative collaborations between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. Based on Bruce Chatwin's novel THE VICEROY OF OUIDAH, the film stars Kinski as a farmer turned-bandit in 19th-century Brazil who is exiled to West Africa to revive the slave trade. Herzog once again focuses on an outcast with grand visions of an untamed world overwhelmed by a foreign environment. Kinski is, of course, Kinski intense to the point of mania and a fascinating, furious center for the picture. In German with English subtitles
AUG 22-24 Tues-Thurs at 6:45, 8:15, 9:45pm
NEW 35MM PRINT!
LESSONS OF DARKNESS
(Werner Herzog, France/UK/Germany, 1992, 35mm, 50 min.)
Herzog prefers to think of this film as science fiction rather than documentary, as it depicts a tragically alien land: the flaming Kuwaiti oil fields post-Desert Storm. He deliberately avoided filming anything recognizable. Only someone with as passionate a view of the conflict between humanity and nature could make such a poetic and beautiful vision of utter madness and destruction. In German, English, and Arabic with English subtitles
�"It's a meditative, powerful, unique and strangely beautiful movie." SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
AUG 25-27 Fri-Sun at 7, 9pm (plus Sat, Sun at 5pm)
WHEEL OF TIME
(Werner Herzog, Germany, 2003, 35mm, 80 min.)
Buddha found enlightenment sitting under a tree in Bodh Gaya, India, and today Buddhist monks are ordained in this holy place. Werner Herzog - who claimed to have once walked from Munich to Paris - takes the monks lengthy pilgrimage, which can comprise more than 3000 miles for some, and their creation of the intricate "Wheel of Life" sand mandala as jumping-off points for a thoughtful, highly personal look at what Buddhism means to its most fervent adherents as well as to the rest of us. In English and Tibetan with English subtitles
"The assembly and eventual destruction...[of the Kalachakra sand mandala] is the cycle around which the German director Werner Herzog's absorbing documentary is structured." Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES