Werner Herzog est un cinéaste dont les œuvres explorent souvent le domaine des rêves impossibles et des talents singuliers. Associé au mouvement du Nouveau Cinéma Allemand, ses films se caractérisent par une exploration distinctive de la condition humaine. Herzog examine les frontières de l'ambition et de l'obsession, souvent dans des paysages inhospitaliers. Son approche cinématographique met au défi le spectateur de contempler la valeur de l'effort face à des obstacles insurmontables.
A la fois journal de tournage du film Fitzcarraldo et réflexion sur l'art cinématographique, cet essai de W. Herzog décrit des évènements intérieurs, des pensées et des catastrophes inventées par un esprit empli de poésie. Il accompagne la rétrospective consacrée au cinéaste, présentée au Centre Pompidou jusqu'en mars 2009.
En novembre 1974, W. Herzog se rend à Paris à pied, au chevet de son amie Lotte Eisner, très malade. De Munich à Paris, il tient son carnet de route : exaltation, épuisement, plénitude.
'One of the best things published about cinema.' Sight & Sound Herzog was once hailed by Francois Truffaut as the most important director alive. Famous for his frequent collaborations with mercurial actor Klaus Kinski - including the epics Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, and the terrifying Nosferatu - and more recently with documentaries such as Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Into the Abyss, Herzog has built a body of work that is one of the most vital in post-war German cinema. Here, he reflects on his legendary and inspiring career.
Werner Herzog is the undisputed master of extreme cinema: building an opera house in the middle of the jungle; walking from Munich to Paris in the dead of winter; descending into an active volcano; living in the wilderness among grizzly bears - he has always been intrigued by the extremes of human experience. From his early movies to his later documentaries, he has made a career out of exploring the boundaries of human endurance: what we are capable of in exceptional circumstances and what these situations reveal about who we really are. But these are not just great cinematic themes. During the making of his films, Herzog pushed himself and others to the limits, often putting himself in life-threatening situations. As a child in rural Bavaria, a single loaf of bread had to last his family all week. The hunger and deprivation he experienced during his early years perhaps explain his fascination with the limits of physical endurance.All his life, Herzog would embrace risk and danger, constantly looking for challenges and adventures. Filled to the brim with memorable stories and poignant observations, Every Man for Himself and God against All unveils the influences and ideas that drive his creativity and have shaped his unique view of the world. This book tells, for the first time, the story of his extraordinary and fascinating life.
Werner Herzog doesn't write traditional screenplays. He writes fever dreams brimming with madness, greed, humor, and dark isolation that can shift dramatically during production--and have materialized into extraordinary masterpieces unlike anything in film today. Harnessing his vision and transcendent reality, these four pieces of long-form prose earmark a renowned filmmaker at the dawn of his career -- Back cover
Robert Johnson was undoubtedly the most outstanding of the Mississippi Delta blues musicians and also one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but his short life remains steeped in mystery and wrapped in some of the most enduring legends of modern music. Love in Vain is Alan Greenberg's remarkable, highly acclaimed, and genre-defying screenplay and is widely considered to be one of the foremost books on Robert Johnson's life and legacy and an extraordinary exercise in American mythmaking. Newly revised and complete with extensive historical notes on Johnson's life and the culture of the Mississippi Delta and blues music during the 1930s, Love in Vain is at once a classic of music writing and a screenplay whose reputation lies firmly in the realm of great American literature.
Interviews with the director of Signs of Life; Aguirre, the Wrath of God to Grizzly Man; and Cave of Forgotten Dreams
“Ace Greenberg did almost everything better than I do—bridge, magic tricks, dog training, and arbitrage—all the important things in life.” —WARREN BUFFETT Alan C. Greenberg, the former chairman of Bear, Stearns, and a celebrated philanthropist, was known throughout the financial world for his biting, quirky but invaluable and wise memos. Read by everyone from Warren Buffett to Jeff Bezos to Tom Peters (“I love this book,” the coauthor of In Search of Excellence said), Greenberg’s MEMOS FROM THE CHAIRMAN comprise a unique—and uniquely simple—management philosophy. Make decisions based on common sense. Avoid the herd mentality. Control expenses with unrelenting vigil. Run your business at the highest level of morality. Free your motivated, intelligent people from the chain of command. Always return phone calls promptly and courteously. Never believe your own body odor is perfume. And stay humble, humble, humble.
The second in a series: the master filmmaker's prose scenarios for four of his notable films On the first day of editing Fata Morgana, Werner Herzog recalls, his editor said: "With this kind of material we have to pretend to invent cinema." And this, Herzog says, is what he tries to do every day. In this second volume of his scenarios, the peerless filmmaker's genius for invention is on clear display. Written in Herzog's signature fashion--more prose poem than screenplay, transcribing the vision unfolding before him as if in a dream--the four scenarios here (three never before translated into English) reveal an iconoclastic craftsman at the height of his powers. Along with his template for the film poem Fata Morgana (1971), this volume includes the scenarios for Herzog's first two feature films, Signs of Life (1968) and Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970), along with the hypnotic Heart of Glass (1976). In a brief introduction, Herzog describes the circumstances surrounding each scenario, inviting readers into the mysterious process whereby one man's vision becomes every viewer's waking dream.