Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog Stipetić, known as Werner Herzog, is a German screenwriter, film director, author, actor and opera director...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth5 September 1942
CityMunich, Germany
CountryGermany
wonderful filmmaking
You have to be very prudent with what you are doing and what sort of tools you are utilizing. Drones have become a wonderful new tool in filmmaking.
korean film kindergarten
I was able to persuade them to let me shoot in areas that were beyond the volcano itself. Beyond the joint scientific program between Cambridge University and North Korean scientists. I was able to film in a kindergarten, subway, other things you would not normally be allowed to do.
choices feelings film
I always had a feeling, for example, that there should be something from Verdi's "Requiem" in the film. You hear it when you see the lava flow in Iceland. That turned out to be a very easy choice.
serious world film
Ten years ago in Antarctica shooting "Encounters at the End of the World," I met a very fine volcanologist from Cambridge University [Clive Oppenheimer] and we kept talking about doing a film and all of a sudden it became serious when he hinted at the possibility to film in North Korea.
film north-korea ethiopia
Netflix knew I was going to North Korea and Ethiopia and Iceland. They saw the film and liked it and that was that.
audience audiences encouraged exactly films fraction people present screening speak tiny witnessed
I'm making films for an audience out there and a very tiny fraction of them are would-be filmmakers. But let's speak of them-the would-be filmmakers, the tiny fraction. I've witnessed many times when I've showed films and was present at a screening that exactly those people feel very much encouraged by what I'm doing.
people film construction
The deal was we had to have people accompanying us and they would ask us not to film something [in North Korea]. For example, we wanted to film at a certain place and there happened to be a building under construction and it didn't look as fancy as the other buildings, so they wanted us to shoot where everything looked finished and made a good impression of the cityscape.
thinking filmmaker
I think I'm a prudent filmmaker.
easy films
Many of my films have not been easy work,
believed boring films german-director mainstream stories strangely
Strangely enough, I've always believed that my stories were mainstream stories; the films are narrated in a way that you never have a boring moment.
long film farmers
It was a subject [ volcanoes] that was dormant in me for a long time and it popped up 40 years ago when I made a [short] film on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe about a volcano that was about to explode and a single farmer refused to leave ["La Soufrière"].
stupid film responsible
Clive [Oppenheimer] and I figured out that I'm the only one probably in the film industry who is clinically sane. I say that as a joke, but there's a grain of truth to it. I'm not a stupid daredevil who jumps into the crater of the volcano to get the closest close-up, I'm not one of those. And you have to be aware that you have a crew with you and you are responsible.
propaganda north-korea
Everything you see in North Korea, it's all propaganda, but it's all connected to the volcano.
party interesting people
There are photos of Kim Jong-un right up atop the volcano. I actually wrote a letter to him asking if I could speak on camera. I never got an answer. But what was interesting was the people who were responsible for us, our "guards," it took them two days to figure out how I should address him. "President? No, you can't because there's a president for eternity." And it was a time when his status was still in flux. Only a few months later there was this party congress which assigned an official title to him, but that was after we did our film.