Focus Features

Herzog calls the shots.

The last few years have seen a resurgence in German cinema – a new wave with films like The Lives of Others, Head-On and Requiem. 

The previous wave occurred in the 70s with the arrival of Fassbinder, Wenders, Schlondorff and Herzog – the poet of life at the extremes. Together with actor Klaus Kinski, Herzog pushed his art further and further culminating in Fitzcarraldo, with its epic endeavor of dragging a boat over a mountain.

Both waves intersected at this year's Oscar contest, with The Baader Meinhof Complex nominated for the Best Foreign Language film, and Herzog nominated for his documentary, Encounters at the End of the World.

Herzog has this to say about filmmaking:

"Film-making is a more vulnerable journey than most other creative ventures.  When you are a sculptor you have only one obstacle - a lump of rock - on which you chisel away. But film-making involves organization and money and technology, things like that.  You might get the best shot of your life, but if the lab mixes the developing solution wrongly, then your shot is gone forever. You can build a ship, cast 5,000 extras and plan a scene with your leading actors, and in the morning one of them has a stomach ache and cannot go on set.  These things happen, everything is interwoven and interlinked, and if one element does not function properly, then the whole venture is prone to collapse.  Film-makers should be taught about how things will go wrong, about how to deal with these problems, how to handle a crew that is getting out of hand, how to handle a producing partner who will not pay up or a distributor who won't advertise properly, things like this.  People who keep moaning about these kinds of problems are not really suited to this line of business.

And, vitally, aspiring film-makers have to be taught that sometimes the only way of overcoming problems involves real physicality.  Many great film-makers have been astonishingly physical, athletic people.  A much higher percentage than writers or musicians.  Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school.  But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you had travelled alone on foot, let's say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about 5,000 kilometres.  While walking, write.  Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks.  I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not.  While you are walking you would learn much more about film-making than if you were in a classroom.  During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in 5 years at film school.  Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema.  It is the very opposite of passion.

At my utopian film academy I would have students do athletic things with real physical contact, like boxing, something that would teach them to be unafraid. Students would train every evening from 8 to 10 with a boxing instructor: sparring, somersaults (backwards and forwards), juggling, magic card tricks. Whether or not you would be a film-maker by the end I do not know, but at least you would come out as an athlete.  My film school would allow young people who want to make films to experience a certain climate of excitement of the mind. This is what ultimately creates films and nothing else. It is not technicians that film schools should be producing, but people with a real agitation of mind.  People with spirit, with a burning flame within them."  

Extract taken from Herzog on Herzog edited by Paul Cronin (Faber & Faber, 2002).

Essential Viewing: Signs of Life [Buy], Even Dwarfs Started Small [Buy], Fata Morgana [Buy], Aguirre, the Wrath of God [Buy], The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser [Buy], Fitzcarraldo [Buy], Lessons of Darkness [Buy], Little Dieter Needs to Fly [Buy], Rescue Dawn [Buy], Encounters at the End of the World [Buy].

Herzog calls the shots.

The last few years have seen a resurgence in German cinema – a new wave with films like The Lives of Others, Head-On and Requiem. 

The previous wave occurred in the 70s with the arrival of Fassbinder, Wenders, Schlondorff and Herzog – the poet of life at the extremes. Together with actor Klaus Kinski, Herzog pushed his art further and further culminating in Fitzcarraldo, with its epic endeavor of dragging a boat over a mountain.

Both waves intersected at this year's Oscar contest, with The Baader Meinhof Complex nominated for the Best Foreign Language film, and Herzog nominated for his documentary, Encounters at the End of the World.

Herzog has this to say about filmmaking:

"Film-making is a more vulnerable journey than most other creative ventures.  When you are a sculptor you have only one obstacle - a lump of rock - on which you chisel away. But film-making involves organization and money and technology, things like that.  You might get the best shot of your life, but if the lab mixes the developing solution wrongly, then your shot is gone forever. You can build a ship, cast 5,000 extras and plan a scene with your leading actors, and in the morning one of them has a stomach ache and cannot go on set.  These things happen, everything is interwoven and interlinked, and if one element does not function properly, then the whole venture is prone to collapse.  Film-makers should be taught about how things will go wrong, about how to deal with these problems, how to handle a crew that is getting out of hand, how to handle a producing partner who will not pay up or a distributor who won't advertise properly, things like this.  People who keep moaning about these kinds of problems are not really suited to this line of business.

And, vitally, aspiring film-makers have to be taught that sometimes the only way of overcoming problems involves real physicality.  Many great film-makers have been astonishingly physical, athletic people.  A much higher percentage than writers or musicians.  Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school.  But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you had travelled alone on foot, let's say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about 5,000 kilometres.  While walking, write.  Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks.  I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not.  While you are walking you would learn much more about film-making than if you were in a classroom.  During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in 5 years at film school.  Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema.  It is the very opposite of passion.

At my utopian film academy I would have students do athletic things with real physical contact, like boxing, something that would teach them to be unafraid. Students would train every evening from 8 to 10 with a boxing instructor: sparring, somersaults (backwards and forwards), juggling, magic card tricks. Whether or not you would be a film-maker by the end I do not know, but at least you would come out as an athlete.  My film school would allow young people who want to make films to experience a certain climate of excitement of the mind. This is what ultimately creates films and nothing else. It is not technicians that film schools should be producing, but people with a real agitation of mind.  People with spirit, with a burning flame within them."  

Extract taken from Herzog on Herzog edited by Paul Cronin (Faber & Faber, 2002).

Essential Viewing: Signs of Life [Buy], Even Dwarfs Started Small [Buy], Fata Morgana [Buy], Aguirre, the Wrath of God [Buy], The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser [Buy], Fitzcarraldo [Buy], Lessons of Darkness [Buy], Little Dieter Needs to Fly [Buy], Rescue Dawn [Buy], Encounters at the End of the World [Buy].