The Wild Blue Yonder
| The Wild Blue Yonder | |
|---|---|
 Poster for the Italian version |
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| Directed by | Werner Herzog |
| Produced by | Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, Tetramedia, André Singer/West Park Pictures, France 2 |
| Written by | Werner Herzog |
| Starring | Brad Dourif as the alien Martin Lo Roger Diehl Ted Sweetser Donald E. Williams Ellen S. Baker Franklin Chang-Diaz Shannon Lucid Michael J. McCulley |
| Music by | Ernst Reijseger Mola Sylla |
| Cinematography | Henry Kaiser Tanja Koop Klaus Scheurich |
| Editing by | Joe Bini |
| Distributed by | Fandango (Italy) 518 Media (USA) |
| Release date(s) |  September 5, 2005 November 8 (USA), 2005 June 15, 2007 (UK) , |
| Running time | 81 min. |
| Country | United Kingdom France Germany |
| Language | English |
The Wild Blue Yonder is a science fiction film by the German director Werner Herzog, released in 2005. It has been presented at the 62nd Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize. It went on to screen in competition at the Mar del Plata Film Festival and the Sitges Film Festival, it won "Carnet Jove - Special Mention" at the latter. Most of the film consists of recontextualized documentary footage which is overlaid with fictional (sometimes fantastical) narration. This technique was used in Herzog's earlier film Lessons of Darkness.
The film is about an extraterrestrial (played by Brad Dourif) who came to Earth several decades ago from a water planet (The Wild Blue Yonder), after it suffered through an ice age. His narration reveals that the aliens have tried through the years to form a community on our planet, though without great success.
The alien also tells the story of a space mission he became aware of after finding a job with the CIA. In the late 90s, he says, the debris from the Roswell UFO crash was unearthed and examined. The scientists falsely believed that they had contracted an infectious alien disease from the debris, and an exploratory mission was launched to Blue Yonder (represented with archival footage from STS-34 and Henry Kaiser's diving expedition in Antarctica) in order that a new, uninfected human colony might be created there. After deciding Blue Yonder was suitable for human habitation, the astronauts returned home to Earth 800 years later only to discover that the planet had been abandoned in their absence.
[edit] Trivia
The scenes in space are courtesy of NASA and feature authentic astronauts.
According to the DVD extras, the interview with the alien is filmed in Niland, CA (where two railroads meet) and nearby Slab City, CA.
