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Werner Herzog

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Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog in Brussels, 2007
Born
Werner Herzog Stipetić

(1942-09-05) 5 September 1942 (age 82)
Munich, Germany
Occupation(s)Actor
Director
Screenwriter
Producer
Years active1962–present
Spouse(s)Martje Grohmann
(1967–1987)
Christine Maria Ebenberger (1987–1994)
Lena Herzog
(1999–present)
Websitehttp://www.wernerherzog.com

Werner Herzog Stipetić (German pronunciation: [ˈʋɛɐ̯nɐ ˈhɛɐ̯tsoːk ˈstɪpɛtɪtʃ]; born 5 September 1942), known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.

He is often considered as one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Schröter, and Wim Wenders. His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams,[1] people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature.[2] French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important film director alive."[3]

Personal life

Herzog was born Werner Herzog Stipetić to Dietrich Herzog and Elizabeth Stipetić in Munich. His family moved to the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang (nestled in the Chiemgau Alps), after the house next to theirs was destroyed during the bombing at the close of World War II.[4] When he was 12, he and his family moved back to Munich. His father had abandoned the family early in his youth. Werner would later adopt his father's surname Herzog (German for "duke"), which he thought sounded more impressive for a filmmaker.Cite error: The <ref> tag has too many names (see the help page).

The same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school and he adamantly refused. He was almost expelled for this and until the age of 18 listened to no music, sang no songs and studied no instruments. He later said that he would easily give 10 years from his life to be able to play an instrument. At 14, he was inspired by an encyclopedia entry about filmmaking which he says provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a film-maker—that, and the 35 mm camera that the young Herzog stole from the Munich Film School.[5] In the commentary for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he states, "I don't consider it theft—it was just a necessity—I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with." He studied at the University of Munich despite earning a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While in his teens he travelled to various exotic places.

In the early 1960s, Herzog worked nightshifts as a welder in a steel factory to help fund his first films. He has spoken of how, even before leaving school, bought a house in the UK, in what was likely the Moss Side area of Manchester, relating how it was there that he learned to speak English.".[6] In 1966 he worked shortly in television under the auspices of NASA.[7]

Herzog has been married three times and has three children. In 1967, he married Martje Grohmann,[8] with whom he had a son in 1973, Rudolph Amos Achmed,[9] who is a film producer and director as well as the author of several non-fiction books. In 1980, his daughter, Hanna Mattes (now a photographer and an artist), was born to Eva Mattes.[10] In 1987, Herzog was divorced from Grohmann; later the same year he married Christine Maria Ebenberger.[11] Their son, Simon Herzog, who attends Columbia University, was born in 1989. Herzog and Ebenberger divorced in 1994. In 1995 Herzog moved to the United States and in 1999 married photographer Lena Pisetski, now Lena Herzog.[12] They live in Los Angeles.

In January 2006 actor Joaquin Phoenix overturned his car on a road above Sunset Boulevard. Herzog, who lived nearby, helped him get out of it.[13] A few days later, while Herzog was giving an interview to Mark Kermode for the BBC, an unknown individual shot Herzog with an air rifle during filming. Herzog continued the interview and showed his wound on camera but acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, remarking, "It is not a significant bullet."[14][15]

Career

Besides using professional actors, German, American and otherwise, Herzog is known for using people from the locality in which he is shooting. Especially in his documentaries, he uses locals to benefit his, as he calls it, "ecstatic truth", using footage of them both playing parts and being themselves. Herzog and his films have won and been nominated for many awards. Herzog's first major award was the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury for his first feature film Signs of Life[16] (Nosferatu the Vampyre was also nominated for Golden Bear in 1979). Most notably, Herzog won the best director award for Fitzcarraldo at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. On the same Festival, but a few years earlier (in 1975) his movie The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser won The Special Jury Prize (also known as the 'Silver Palm'). Other films directed by Herzog nominated for Golden Palm are: Woyzeck and Where the Green Ants Dream. His films were also nominated at many other very important festivals all around the world: César Awards (Aguirre, the Wrath of God), Emmy Awards (Little Dieter Needs to Fly), European Film Awards (My Best Fiend) and Venice Film Festival (Scream of Stone and The Wild Blue Yonder).

In 1987 he and his half-brother Lucki Stipetic won the Bavarian Film Awards for Best Producing, for the film Cobra Verde.[17] In 2002 he won the Dragon of Dragons Honorary Award during Kraków Film Festival in Kraków.

Herzog was honored at the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, receiving the 2006 Film Society Directing Award.[18] Four of his films have been shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival: Wodaabe - Herdsmen of the Sun in 1990, Bells from the Deep in 1993, Lessons of Darkness in 1993, and The Wild Blue Yonder in 2006. Herzog's April 2007 appearance at the Ebertfest in Champaign, Illinois earned him the Golden Thumb Award, and an engraved glockenspiel given to him by a young film maker inspired by his films. Grizzly Man, directed by Herzog, won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Encounters at the End of the World won the award for Best Documentary at the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, Herzog's first nomination.

Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if Errol Morris completed the movie project on pet cemeteries that he had been working on, in order to challenge and motivate Morris, whom Herzog perceived as incapable of following up on the projects he conceived. In 1978 when the film Gates of Heaven premiered, Werner Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe, an event later incorporated into a short documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe by Les Blank. At the event, Herzog suggested that he hoped the act would serve to encourage anyone having difficulty bringing a project to fruition.

In 2009, Herzog became the only filmmaker in recent history to enter two films in competition in the same year at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was entered into the festival's official competition schedule, and his My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? entered the competition as a "surprise film".[19] Herzog also provided the narration for the short film Plastic Bag directed by Ramin Bahrani which was the Opening Night film in the Corto Cortissimo section of the festival.[20]

Herzog is also a Jury Member for the digital studio Filmaka, a platform for undiscovered filmmakers to show their work to industry professionals.[21]

Herzog was the President of the Jury at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.[22][23][24] He Was the Chief guest of the 15th International Film Festival of Kerala(IFFK 2010 December)

Herzog also lent his voice to the animated television program The Boondocks in the third season premiere episode It's a Black President, Huey Freeman in which he played himself filming a documentary about the series' cast of characters and their actions during the 2008 election of Barack Obama. He also played Walter Hotenhoffer (formerly known as Augustus Gloop) in the Simpsons episode The Scorpion's Tale which aired in March 2011.

Herzog completed a documentary called Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 2010, which shows Herzog's journey into the Chauvet Cave in France. Although generally skeptical of 3-D film as a format,[25] Herzog premiered the film at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival in 3-D and had its European premiere at the 2011 Berlinale.

Also in 2010, Herzog's documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, which portrays the life of an indigenous tribe from the Siberian part of the Taiga, had its premiere at the 2010 Telluride Film Festival.

Film theory

Herzog's films have received considerable critical acclaim and achieved popularity on the art house circuit. They have also been the subject of controversy in regard to their themes and messages, especially the circumstances surrounding their creation. A notable example is Fitzcarraldo, in which the obsessiveness of the central character was mirrored by the director during the making of the film, as shown in Burden of Dreams, a documentary filmed during the making of Fitzcarraldo. His treatment of subjects has been characterized as Wagnerian in its scope, as Fitzcarraldo and his later film Invincible (2001) are directly inspired by opera, or operatic themes. He is proud of never using storyboards and often improvising large parts of the script, as he explains on the commentary track to Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

Collaborations

Cast

Actors/Actress in a Leading Role
Actors in a Supporting Role

Crew

Cinematographers
Thomas Mauch

Mauch worked with Herzog on ten films: starting with Signs of Life and Last Words and ending with Fitzcarraldo. He helped to create hallucinogenic atmosphere in Aguirre and realistic style of Stroszek. Mauch won Film Award in Gold and National Society of Film Critics Awards for Aguirre. He was Herzog's first choice to be cinematographer during Cobra Verde, but after a perpetual torrent of verbal abuse from Kinski, Mauch walked out on the project. That was Mauch and Herzog's final collaboration.

Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein

Reitwein worked with Herzog on seventeen films. Reitwein was Thomas Mauch's assistant camera during Even Dwarfs Started Small. His first independent work for Herzog was Precautions Against Fanatics in 1969. He helped to create poetical atmosphere of Fata Morgana, Heart of Glass, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Nosferatu. He won the Film Award in Gold for Heart of Glass and Where the Green Ants Dream at the German Film Awards. He last collaborated with Herzog during Pilgrimage in 2001.

Peter Zeitlinger

Zeitlinger collaborated with Herzog on thirteen films, from Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) to now filming television documentary Death Row (2011), including Rescue Dawn and Grizzly Man. He was nominated for Chlotrudis Award for Encounters at the End of the World in 2007 and for Independent Spirit Award for Bad Lieutenant. Port of Call: New Orleans in 2009.

Producers
Walter Saxer

Saxer produced sixteen of Herzog's films, including Nosferatu and The White Diamond. He worked as Sound Department during seven of Herzog's films, including The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner and Echoes from a Somber Empire. He co-wrote Scream of Stone which Herzog directed. Saxer appeared as himself in Herzog's My Best Fiend and in Les Blank's Burden of Dreams, in which he was also subjected to the verbal abuse of Kinski.

Lucki Stipetic

Lucki is Herzog's half-brother. He also produced several Herzog films, including Aguirre and Invincible. Stipetic is a head of Werner Herzog Productions. He won Bavarian Film Award in 1988 for Cobra Verde and International Documentary Association Award for Little Dieter Needs to Fly in 1998. He was also nominated for an Emmy Award in 1998.

André Singer

Singer worked either as an executive producer or producer on eight of Herzog’s documentaries starting with “Lessons of Darkness” in 1991, “The Wild Blue Yonder” – won the International Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival, 2006 and including two of the most recent “La Boheme, short”, 2009, and “Into the Abyss”/”Death Row”, 2011.

Editors
Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus

Mainka-Jellinghaus worked with Herzog on twenty films, from Signs of Life and Last Words (both from 1968) to Where the Green Ants Dream (1984). She won Film Award in Gold during German Film Awards for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser in 1975.

Joe Bini

Bini collaborated with Herzog on nineteen films, from Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) to Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2009). He was nominated by American Cinema Editors for Best Edited Documentary Film for Grizzly Man in 2005.

Costumes designers
Ann Poppel

Poppel collaborated with Herzog on four films, including Nosferatu the Vampyre and Scream of Stone.

Gisela Storch

Storch worked with Herzog on six films: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde. She was nominated for a Saturn Award for Nosferatu the Vampire in 1979.

Composers
Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh was a German Krautrock band founded by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke. The band took its name from the Popol Vuh, a manuscript of Quiché Maya kingdom, after watching Herzog's Fata Morgana (in which Lotte Eisner reads parts of the Popol Vuh). The band composed music for eight Herzog's films: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Heart of Glass, Nosferatu, The Dark Glow of the Mountains, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde and My Best Fiend. Their compositions were also used by Herzog in Rescue Dawn. Florian Fricke made a cameo as a pianist in Signs of Life and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

Ernst Reijseger

Herzog invited Reijseger to compose scores for his films four times to that date. Two of them were documentaries (The White Diamond an Cave of Forgotten Dreams) and two were features (The Wild Blue Yonder and My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done). His music was also used in Rescue Dawn and in video documentary short about recording music for Grizzly Man titled In the Edges: The 'Grizzly Man' Session directed by Erik Nelson. Reijseger also had a cameo as himself in My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done.

Others
Henning von Gierke

Gierke collaborated with Herzog on seven films and several operas. He was Production Designer during The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Nosferatu the Vampyre and Fitzcarraldo. As a Set Decorator he worked on Heart of Glass and Woyzeck, as Stage Designer on operas: Lohengrin and Giovanna d'Arco and as Costume Designer on film The Transformation of the World Into Music. Gierke shot additional still photographs on Stroszek 's set. He appeared twice in Herzog's film The Transformation of the World Into Music as himself and in Herzog's TV realisation of opera Giovanna d'Arco. Von Gierke won Film Award in Gold for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser during German Film Awards and Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement for Nosferatu, at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival.[26]

Filmography

Fiction feature films

Fiction short films

Documentary feature films

Documentary short films

Screenwriter

Films written, not directed, by Herzog:

Herzog has written all his films, except these which he co-wrote:

  • Scream of Stone (1991)
  • Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
  • My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

Herzog has also co-written:

Actor

Stage works

Opera

Theatre

  • Floresta Amazonica (A Midsummer Night's Dream) (1992, Teatro Joao Caetano)
  • Varété (1993, Hebbel Theatre)
  • Specialitaeten (1993, Etablissement Ronacher)

Bibliography

Books

Writer:

  • Of Walking In Ice (Free Association, New York, 2007, ISBN 978-0-9796121-0-7)
  • Fitzcarraldo: The Original Story (Fjord Pr, January 1983, ISBN 978-0-940242-04-3)
  • "Conquest of the Useless" Herzog's diaries of the making of "Fitzcarraldo"

Co-writer:

  • Paul Cronin. Herzog on Herzog (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2002, ISBN 0-571-20708-1) (extracts[28])
  • Lena Herzog. Pilgrims: Becoming the Path Itself (Periplus Publishing London Ltd., ISBN 1-902699-43-2)
Screenplays

Writer:

  • Cobra Verde (Jade-Flammarion 2001, ISBN 2-08-203009-1)
  • Wo Die Grünen Ameisen Träumen (Hanser 1984, ISBN 3-446-14106-5)
  • Nosferatu (Ulbulibri, 1984)
  • Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu, Stroszek (Mazarine 1982)
  • Screenplays: Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Every Man For Himself and God Against All & Land of Silence and Darkness (translated by Alan Greenberg & Martje Herzog; Tanam, New York, ISBN 0-934378-03-7)
  • Drehbücher III: Stroszek, Nosferatu (Hanser 1979)
  • Drehbücher II: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit (Hanser 1977)
  • Drehbücher I: Lebenszeichen, Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen, Fata Morgana (Hanser 1977)

Co-writer:

  • Alan Greenberg & Herbert Achternbusch. Heart of Glass 1976

References

  1. ^ "40 Great Actor & Director Partnerships: Klaus Kinski & Werner Herzog". Empire Magazine. Retrieved 2010-06-19.
  2. ^ "Werner Herzog and his film language". thedailystar.net. Retrieved 2010-06-19.
  3. ^ Cronin, Paul (2002). Herzog on Herzog. London: Faber and Faber Limited. pp. vii–viii. ISBN 978-0-571-20708-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  4. ^ "Werner Herzog on the Story Behind 'Rescue Dawn'". Fresh Air. October 27, 1998. Retrieved 2007-06-21. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  5. ^ Bissell, Tom. "The Secret Mainstream: Contemplating the mirages of Werner Herzog". Harper's. December 2006.
  6. ^ Cronin, Paul (2002). Herzog on Herzog. London: Faber and Faber Limited. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-571-20708-4. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  7. ^ Corrigan Timothy, Producing Herzog: from a body of images. In "The films of Werner Herzog" edited by Timothy Corrigan, 1986, Methuen, N. York & London, pp 3-19
  8. ^ IMDb
  9. ^ IMDb
  10. ^ IMDb
  11. ^ IMDb
  12. ^ IMDb
  13. ^ "Phoenix rises thanks to Herzog". London: Guardian. 3 February 2006. Retrieved 28 September 2009.
  14. ^ Martin, Tim (3 February 2006). "People". London: Times Online. Retrieved 28 September 2009.
  15. ^ "Werner Herzog gets shot by LA sniper during interview". Retrieved 1 November 2010.
  16. ^ "Berlinale 1968: Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2010-03-03.
  17. ^ http://www.bayern.de/Anlage19170/PreistraegerdesBayerischenFilmpreises-Pierrot.pdf [dead link]
  18. ^ "Film Society Directing Award". sffs.org. Archived from the original on May 27, 2008. Retrieved 2009-04-08.
  19. ^ "Filmmaker Herzog is up against himself in Venice | Entertainment | Film". Reuters. 2009-09-05. Retrieved 2009-10-25.
  20. ^ "66th Venice Film Festival Corto Cortissimo".
  21. ^ Filmaka Jury Member Werner Herzog, Filmaka.com.
  22. ^ "Werner Herzog to be President of the Jury of the 60th Berlinale". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2009-12-22.
  23. ^ "Werner Herzog to head Berlin film festival jury". thelocal.de. Retrieved 2009-12-22.
  24. ^ "Werner Herzog is to head the Berlin Film Festival jury". bbc news. 2009-11-20. Retrieved 2009-12-22.
  25. ^ http://www.planet-mag.com/2010/features/alex-shephard/werner-herzog-interview/
  26. ^ "Berlinale 1978: Prize Winners". berlinale.de. Retrieved 2010-08-15.
  27. ^ Bayreuth Festival web portal: Werner Herzog's biography
  28. ^ "Herzog on Herzog". Thestickingplace.com. Retrieved 2009-10-25.
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