Werner Herzog At Onassis Stegi

Werner Herzog, the German director who has never stopped finding ways to breathe new life into the conversation around film, comes to the Onassis Stegi.

Photo © Lena Herzog

Versatile, impossible to pigeon-hole and always artistically unorthodox, Werner Herzog visits Athens, as a guest of the Onassis Stegi, for an event covering the full range of his uncompromising and idiosyncratic, multifaceted and influential universe. Immerse into the world of seven selected films drawing from across all five decades of Werner Herzog’s filmography, on 11th April at the Upper Stage of the Onassis Stegi and on 13th April at Goethe institute Athen. Appreciate an in-depth discussion at the Main Stage of the Onassis Stegi on 15th April, with Onassis Foundation board member, Paul Holdengräber. And if you happen to be a filmmaker or film student, take part on the master class that takes place on the 16th April at the Onassis Library (submission Deadline: April, 5).

Werner Herzog grew up in a village in Bavaria, cut off from culture and without access to television or cinema. He made his first phone call at the age of 17 and his first film at 19.Self-taught, a visionary with an inexhaustible supply of inspiration, he built himself a highly eclectic career as a film-maker ("Aguirre—the Wrath of God", "Grizzly Man", "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" ), has acted alongside Tom Cruise, taught aspiring film-makers, saved Joaquin Phoenix's life (in reality, not in the movies), directed opera and eaten his shoe (when he lost a bet he made in a documentary).

Werner Herzog has a special relationship with Greece and antiquity. His grandfather Rudolph, a scholar and archaeologist, unearthed ancient artefacts in excavations he conducted on the Greek island Kos in the early 20th century. The discoveries fascinated the young Herzog, whose cinematic journeys to uncharted places they would inspire. Two of his first short films, “Last Words” (1968) and “Signs of Life” (1968) were filmed in Greece.

Curated by: Afroditi Panagiotakou, Pasqua Vorgia

Produced by: Onassis Stegi

Landscapes of the Soul: Werner Herzog in conversation with Paul Holdengräber

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15 April 2019 | Main Stage | 19:00

The master of live interviews, Paul Holdengräber, takes the audience on a journey around the superbly restless mind of one of the contemporary arts’ great personalities

The legendary German director shares stories and thoughts at the Main Stage of the Onassis Stegi, on 15th April, with the American interviewer and curator.

Following on from the conversation the two of them had about ancient Greek literature three years ago at an event co-produced by the Onassis Foundation in New York, this April will see Herzog meet up again with Paul Holdengräber, Founding Executive Director of The Onassis Foundation LA (OLA) and founder and director of The New York Public Library’s LIVE from the NYPL cultural series , for a conversation every bit as unpredictable as the 76-year-old master's career.

Admission is free. Reservation is required (one ticket per person). Please send an email at infotickets@sgt.gr providing name, surname and phone number. Reservations are valid until 50 minutes before the event.

The discussion will be simultaneously translated into Greek and into the Greek sign language.

WERNER HERZOG: Screenings

11 April | Onassis Stegi | Upper Stage | 17:00

13 April | Goethe-Institut Athen Amphitheater (Omirou Str. 14-16) | 17:00

Defying each and every convention from the outset, the ever-growing filmography of Werner Herzog has always stood not only as an irrefutable proof that there is absolutely no dividing line between fiction and documentary filmmaking, but also as an inexhaustible source of ideas, emotions, myths, and ways of life that throw you defenseless each time into new narrative peril only to reel you back once more, stronger than before, armored by his truth. This veritable survival manual continues to attract ever more audiences, consisting as it does of films that go beyond the conventional norms of a standard cinematic oeuvre to border on the realms of experience.

In the lead up to Werner Herzog’s visit to Athens, there are to be two days with screenings of the legendary German director’s films. The seven films to be screened cover the full range of Werner Herzog’s work (features, documentaries, and shorts – the program also includes the two films he shot in Greece in 1968). Drawn from across all five decades of his filmography, they revolve around the perennial themes that lie at the heart of his body of work – one that is uncompromising and idiosyncratic, multifaceted and influential like quite no other.

Credits

Curated by: FLIX.GR

Co-produced by: Onassis Stegi & GOETHE - INSTITUT ATHEN

Program

Onassis Stegi

Thursday 11 April

17:00 "Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia" Documentary feature, Germany | 1993 | 60’ | Greek and English subtitles

19:00 "Into the Inferno" Documentary feature, United Kingdom – Austria | 2016 | 104’ | Greek subtitles

21:00 "Last Words" Fiction short, West Germany | 1968 | 13' | English subtitles

"Signs of Life" Fiction feature, West Germany | 1968 | 87' | Greek and English subtitles

Goethe

Saturday 13 April

17:00 "Land of Silence and Darkness" Documentary feature, West Germany | 1971 | 85’ | Greek subtitles

19:00 "Stroszek" Fiction feature, West Germany | 1976 | 116’ | Greek subtitles

21:30 "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" Fiction feature, West Germany | 1974 | 109’ | Greek subtitles

Entrance to the event is free and on a first come, first served basis. The distribution of entrance tickets begins one (1) hour before each event.

Introduced by Flix.gr (simultaneously translated into English and into the Greek sign language)

Documentary feature, West Germany | 1971 | 85’

The 56-year-old Fini Straubinger – left deaf and blind at 18 by an accident that also confined her to her bed for 30 years – has now dedicated her life to relieving the pain of those she calls “comrades in fate”. Travelling from town to town across Germany, she makes house calls and visits institutions in order to communicate with other deaf-blind people by means of a kind of visual alphabet that traces letters on the palm of the hand. Werner Herzog follows her on a revelatory odyssey that begins as a documentation of the margins in which people deprived of basic tools for communication and survival are forced to live, and ends up as an emotional rollercoaster that reaches its climax at precisely the point where human contact finds a way in which to triumph. Deeply moving, and with a power that one encounters in experiences that can only be absorbed through the use of all the senses, this journey into a “land of silence and darkness” is resoundingly and dazzlingly brilliant. A superlative example of the visual aspect of Werner Herzog’s gaze, always focused as it is on the most inconspicuous and spiritual – and yet at the same time corporeal – facets of human existence.

Written, directed and produced by Werner Herzog Cinematography: Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein Edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus Language: German, German Sign Language

"Stroszek"

Fiction feature, West Germany | 1976 | 116’

Bruno Stroszek, a traveling busker, is released yet again from prison. He returns to his apartment to find all his things: his accordion, grand piano and talking black bird. One night, Bruno meets a prostitute named Eva in a bar and decides to take her home, in order to save her from the pimps who are exploiting her. But the girl’s minders threaten them, and so the couple accepts an offer made by Bruno’s elderly neighbor, named Scheitz, to travel together to America in pursuit of the dream of a better life.

The film was one of the last things Joy Division’s Ian Curtis saw before taking his own life, and a rich source of inspiration for the cinematic work of Jim Jarmusch. It is as idiosyncratic as a cheerful ballad on human despair, and as timely as an unpredictable road movie charting the “American dream”, with all the paranoia and melancholy that goes along with it. Written in three and a half days, and inspired in large part by the real life experiences of its haunting lead, Bruno S., Stroszek was filmed in Plainfield, Wisconsin – home town of serial killer Ed Gein (who inspired the story of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho). It is also David Lynch’s favorite Herzog film (clearly inspiring the dancing chickens in Eraserhead). And, through its innate charms, it is the film that best highlights the characteristically unfettered, uncompromising and realistic signature style of its maker.

Written, directed and produced by Werner Herzog Cinematography: Thomas Mauch Edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus Music by Chet Atkins & Sonny Terry Starring: Bruno S., Eva Mattes & Clemens Scheitz Language: German, English

"The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser"

Fiction feature, West Germany | 1974 | 109’

Kaspar Hauser lives chained up inside a kind of animal-pen prison, unable to see or speak with anyone, cut off from the outside world. He passes his time in darkness, sleeping, eating and living more or less like an animal. One day, a stranger drags him outside, tries quickly to teach him how to speak, stand upright and walk, and then abandons him in a town square, having pressed a letter into his hand asking the local authorities to look after him. After an initial period of confusion among the locals, who don’t quite know how to behave around this strange man, he is taken in by one Professor Daumer, who teaches him how to speak, read and write, and also gives him lessons in music, logic and ethics – and who is stunned by his great aptitude for learning.

Werner Herzog was inspired by the true story of a feral youth, aged 16, found in a German catacomb during the nineteenth century to create what many consider to be his greatest masterpiece: a revelatory study of (covert) human nature, a denunciation of (overt) human cruelty, and a fairy tale forged out of a most frightful reality. Lyrical, poetic, brutal and humane exactly where you least expect it, and with Bruno S.’s devastating anti-performance at its heart, this film – whose original German title (Everyone for Themselves and God Against All) could be seen to capture not only its individual essence, but also that of Werner Herzog’s entire filmography – brought its maker the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and has since taken its place as one of the most important and influential moments in contemporary European cinema.

Written, directed and produced by Werner Herzog Cinematography: Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein Edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus Music by Florian Fricke Starring: Bruno S. & Walter Ladengast Language: Germany

"Bells from the Deep: Faith and Superstition in Russia"

Documentary feature, Germany | 1993 | 60’

On this mystical journey taking in everything from shamanistic rituals to Orthodox baptisms and exorcisms, from mortals calling themselves Christ reincarnate and individuals healed by miraculous waters to incredibly tall women and orphaned bell ringers, Werner Herzog – in one of his most experimental and narratively liberated moments – maps out the spirituality of the Russian people in all their intensity, from faith through to hysteria. By encompassing legends, superstitions, strange human tales, desperate acts of devotion to a higher power, and an atmosphere of surreality that soon gives way to harsh reality, this documentary shot in Siberia in 1993 is something of a meditative ritual in and of itself. When the narrative of its second part focuses on the story of the lost city of Kitezh which, according to legend, God submerged under a lake in answer to its citizens’ prayers for salvation in the face of constant attacks from marauding Huns and Tatars, nothing more than the image of the faithful pressing their ears to the ice to hear bells from the deep is needed for us to realize that this is – above all else – an exquisite encapsulation of the human need to believe in something beyond the human.

Written, directed and produced by Werner Herzog Cinematography: Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein Edited by Rainer Standke Language: English, German, Russian

"Into the Inferno"

Documentary feature, United Kingdom – Austria | 2016 | 104’

With volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer as his guide, Werner Herzog completely gives himself over to the charm that volcanoes have exerted over him since the start of his career (he shot La Soufrière, a documentary short on Guadeloupe’s La Grande Soufrière volcano, in 1977). Together, they visit active volcanoes across the world – from Ethiopia to North Korea and from Iceland to Indonesia. Their explorations go far beyond the paradoxical contradistinction between their extreme photogenic beauty and their extreme destructive power to reach a place where one realizes the ephemeral nature of human life in the face of the proven prehistoric power volcanoes have to extinguish all life on Earth. Speaking with experts, inhabitants of volcanic areas, and admirers of volcanoes around the world, Herzog manages once again to blur – in his characteristic way (and in this case providing an entertaining voice-over too) – the boundaries between documentary and fiction filmmaking. As he muses out loud over visuals that take the breath away, he maps out the points where lava leaves its searing mark as an abiding warning to humankind, and takes audiences by the hand on an unforgettable experience of a journey through a hellishly captivating “inferno”.

Written and directed by Werner Herzog Produced by André Singker & Lucki Stipetić Cinematography: Peter Zeitlinger Edited by Joe Bini Language: English

"Last Words"

Fiction short, West Germany | 1968 | 13'

The last person to leave (in fact, to be forcibly removed from) the remote island of Spinalonga, off Crete – an official leper colony of the Greek state that operated from 1903 until 1957 – now lives in the Cretan town of Elounda. He stays at home all day, plays the lyre in coffee shops at night, and incessantly says he won’t ever say a word, over and over again. This short – shot over two days (mainly at night, according to Herzog) and edited in one, all during the filming of his first feature Signs of Life – is, in reality, fiction passing itself off as pseudo-documentary.

It was Herzog who came up with the idea of the last inhabitant of Spinalonga (played by a real and well-known lyre player) who refuses to speak, while the inhabitants of the island repeat rumors and truths concerning his past and present so many times over that they eventually lose all meaning. Captivated by the local people of Crete, the other-worldly landscape of the abandoned Spinalonga, the traditional music of the Cretan lyre, and the theatricality of prose brought into harmonious contrast with the unaffected manner of non-professional actors, Herzog created Last Words, a short-form triumph of the absurd that also manages to function as a timely piece of commentary on the power of the spoken word – on screen, in life, and as part of history itself. Winner of the Main Prize at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

Written, directed and produced by Werner Herzog Cinematography: Thomas Mauch Edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus Language: Greek

"Signs of Life"

Fiction feature, West Germany | 1968 | 87'

A German paratrooper named Stroszek, wounded during the Second World War, is sent to a Greek island to recuperate. He stays at a fortress, also used as a munitions depot, together with his wife, Nora, and two fellow soldiers – the boorish Meinhart, and the introverted Becker, who claims to be fascinated by ancient Greek culture. But the completely idle ways in which they spend their days leads to a loosening of their grip on reality.

Werner Herzog’s first fiction feature (shooting at the age of 24 a screenplay he wrote when he was 19) was initially based on a true story that he later discovered also inspired Ludwig Achim von Arnim’s Romantic novella The Mad Veteran of Fort Ratonneau, published in 1818. The film was shot – on a stolen 35mm camera and with a budget of 20,000 dollars that Herzog had won through a screenwriting competition in Germany – on location at Elounda on Crete, and on Cos, the island in the Dodecanese where his grandfather, the renowned archeologist Rudolf Herzog, worked for many years. While more academic than the increasingly unconventional narrative films he would go on to make, it is nevertheless an early and exceptional example of his almost obsessive interrogative exploration of people pitted against logic at the heart of history. The contradistinction of the contemporary (music composed by Stavros Xarchakos plays over the titles) with the classical (Chopin), his use of the natural landscape as a major character (just as complex as the characters of the soldiers, who are themselves nothing like the one-dimensional portrayals that were standard in films of the day), and the overarching sense of a small human story reflecting a universal anti-war cry all make Signs of Life one of the most iconic films in Werner Herzog’s oeuvre, awarded the Special Jury Prize in honor of a first-time director at the 1968 Berlin International Film Festival.

Written, directed and produced by Werner Herzog Cinematography: Thomas Mauch Edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus Music by Stavros Xarchakos Starring: Peter Brogle, Wolfgang Reichmann, Athina Zacharopoulou & Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg Language: German

OPEN CALL: Masterclass with Werner Herzog

The legendary director meets 70 filmmakers at Onassis Library (56 Amalias Avenue), on 16th April.

Follow Werner Herzog to a masterclass about cinema, worlds within worlds and the art of always discovering something new.

What stories do you tell through your films? Why are you involved with cinema? How are you connected with the unorthodox world of Werner Herzog? Which of his films have influenced your work? If you could be one of his film characters, who would that be? What would you ask him, if you had one question? Write us about what comes spontaneously to your mind. If only your answer is up to 200 words.

Send us your fiery paragraph to the following email: ask_werner@sgt.gr. Your statement can be in Greek or English.

"You do not need credentials, but you need to be an aspiring filmmaker, a person who has a fire within."

Werner Herzog

Submission Deadline: April, 5

Application for filmmakers and film students

The participants must have knowledge of the English language

Bios

WERNER HERZOG

Werner Herzog has produced, written, and directed more than 60 feature and documentary films, including “Grizzly Man,” “Woyzeck,” “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo,” and “Cave of Forgotten Dreams.” Born in Munich in 1942 and raised in a remote mountain village in Bavaria, Herzog never saw films or television as a child and made his first phone call at the age of 17.

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER

Member, Board of Directors of the Onassis FoundationPaul Holdengräber is an interviewer and curator. He is the Founding Executive Director of Onassis Los Angeles (OLA). Previously, and for 14 years, he was Founder and Director of The New York Public Library’s LIVE from the NYPL cultural series where he interviewed and hosted over 600 events, holding conversations with everyone from Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Ricky Jay to Jay-Z, Errol Morris to Jan Morris, Wes Anderson to Helen Mirren, Werner Herzog to Mike Tyson.Before his tenure at the Library, Holdengräber was the Founder and Director of “The Institute for Art & Cultures” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and a Fellow at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University and has taught at Princeton University, Williams College, Claremont Graduate University among others. In 2003, the French Government named Holdengräber Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and then promoted him in 2012 to the rank of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 2010, The President of Austria awarded him the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art.

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