Like Anselm Kiefer, Werner Herzog is an artist of startling independence. A contemporary of Kiefer's, he was one of the key filmmakers in the New German Cinema movement of the 1970s. Along with Fassbinder and Wenders, he was among the first generation of German filmmakers to emerge in the post-war era. Although keenly aware of the legacy of Germany's recent past, Herzog tended to avoid the specifics of history and politics in favour of creating a mythic universe where civilisation appears on the verge of self-destruction. Outsiders create their own reality and over-reachers are crushed by their ambitious quests. Both Herzog and Kiefer are romantic visionaries with an epic sense of their chosen subjects. They play on the archetypal and allegorical, their explorations linked by a shared interest in mysticism and myth. This film series samples Herzog's feature films.
 

Still from Nosferatu: phantom der nacht 

Program

• Wednesday 2 May 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday 6 May 2pm
  Signs of life
  Dir: Werner Herzog 1968
  90 min. 16mm B&W
  Rated R (unclassified)
  Peter Brogle, Athina Zacharopoulou
  German with English subtitles
  During the last months of the Nazi occupation of Greece, Stroszeck, a wounded German soldier, is sent to the remote island of Kos to defend an ancient fortress (now a useless ammunition dump) from non-existent enemies. With his new, Greek wife and two other bored soldiers, he attempts to kill time as best he can. Suffering from loss of identity, he is suddenly gripped by madness and refuses to obey orders. In his first feature film, Herzog employs minimalism and abstraction, transforming the brooding fortress into an additional protagonist within the drama - a force that isolates and overwhelms soldier Stroszeck mentally and emotionally.
   
• Wednesday 9 May 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday 13 May 2pm
  Even dwarfs started small
  Dir: Werner Herzog 1970
  96 min. 16mm B&W
  Rated R (unclassified)
  Helmut Döring, Gerd Gickel
  German with English subtitles
  The bleak, volcanic island of Lanzarote is the setting for an irreverent fable about a group of short-statured people who stage a rebellion, taking over the institution that houses them. During their uprising, the inmates begin destroying everything, venting their anger toward a world not built for them, negating the bourgeois values that have placed them in detention. Described by Herzog as "the darkest comedy you could imagine", this oddly compassionate film was widely misunderstood when it was first released.
   
• Wednesday 16 May 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday 20 May 2pm
  Aguirre: the wrath of God
  Dir: Werner Herzog 1972
  94 min. 16mm Colour
  Rated PG
  Klaus Kinski, Ruy Guerra
  German with English subtitles
  In the mid-1500s, a Spanish expedition searching for the mythical lost city of Eldorado sent an advance party to explore a tributary of the Amazon; they never returned. Based on 15 lines of text from a journal kept by a monk on the expedition, Herzog expanded this obscure historical incident into a spectacularly horrifying chronicle of imperialism gone amok. Klaus Kinski delivers a magnificent performance as Don Lope de Aguirre, a megalomaniac who dreams of stealing an entire continent. At the time of its release Aguirre was widely read as an allegory for Nazism.
   
• Wednesday 23 May 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday 27 May 2pm
  The enigma of Kaspar Hauser
  Dir: Werner Herzog 1974
  110 min. 16mm Colour
  Rated M15+
  Bruno S., Brigitte Mira
  German with English subtitles
  In 1828, a strange, mute figure is discovered, in a catatonic state, standing in the square of the sleepy German town of Nuremburg. The townsfolk have no idea who he is or where he has come from, but take an immediate interest in him. After learning to talk, he tells of being kept in a cellar and never having seen a human being. Based on a real-life mystery that has puzzled German society for nearly two centuries, Herzog ingeniously cast an unknown street musician, Bruno S., whose mesmerizing performance is unique in the history of film.
   
• Wednesday 30 May 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday 3 June 2pm
  Woyzeck
  Dir: Werner Herzog 1978
  81 min. 16mm Colour
  Rated PG
  Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes
  German with English subtitles
  Shot as a series of lengthy, theatrical, deep-focus takes, Herzog's eighth feature film is a sharp parable on social oppression and dormant rebellion. Woyzeck, a private in the Prussian army, is tormented inwardly by visions of the apocalypse, and outwardly by the unbearable weight of conformity. Struggling to make sense of his existence, he plunges into madness and mayhem. Based on sections of an unfinished play by Georg Büchner, and, most likely, on a real incident which occurred in the 1820s, the film demonstrates Herzog's promotion of fragments of history into a contemporary mythology.
   
• Wednesday 6 June 2pm & 7.15pm
  Sunday 10 June 2pm
  Nosferatu: phantom der nacht
  Dir: Werner Herzog 1979
  124 min. 35mm Colour
  Rated PG
  Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz
  German with English subtitles
  Herzog's lyrical and humorous re-telling of the Dracula story is unique in vampire cinema. Confronting Germany's recent past, Herzog evokes certain elements of Nazi propaganda films - rats, Wagner's music - and associates them with the character of Count Dracula, an outsider who transcends the limits of human possibility because of his un-deadness, evoking the terrors of the plague in his wake. As Dracula, Klaus Kinski gives one of his finest performances, summoning a creature of longing, passion and sorrow who reflects on the torture of living forever. Shot on location in Holland and eastern Slovakia, the menacing landscapes evoke childhood nightmares.

Presented with the generous support of the Goethe Institute.