On Friday, October 6, hundreds of students, faculty, and community members gathered in McNeill Concert Hall for a film screening and Q and A session with legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog. Tickets to the event were free and were distributed at Rhodes Express and at the local bookstore, Novel. Needless to say, the tickets went fast. The evening began with a film screening of Herzog’s 2005 film The Wild Blue Yonder, which tells the story of an alien species attempting to build a utopian city on earth, meanwhile humans in search of a new planet to colonize land on the aliens’ home planet. The film’s use of NASA mission footage and footage of underwater explorations beneath the arctic shelf are beautiful and yet simple. There is no fancy cinematography; in fact, after the film, Herzog explained that the beauty of the film lies with the fact that really anyone with a camera could have made the film.
Still from Herzog’s The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)
Herzog spoke candidly of his childhood in a small Bavarian village, explaining that he didn’t even know cinema existed until a traveling projectionist who was passing through showed him several short films. Herzog recalled a book of cave paintings he admired in a shop window in Munich as a young man, how he worked for months to save up enough money to buy the book, and how he felt such exhilaration as he finally purchased the book and flipped through its pages. He explained that this unique appreciation for cave paintings inspired his 2010 film Cave of Forgotten Dreams and made him the single most qualified person to make a film such as that. The evening was filled with candid recollections and advice that only a seasoned professional could offer. Dr. Rashna Richards, Chair of Film and Media Studies at Rhodes and coordinator for the evening, stated that Herzog has been known to risk his life for his filmmaking, filming in dangerous locations and even once being shot during an interview. It’s apparent that Herzog has a unique and indomitable passion for cinema, one that we were most fortunate to behold.
Photos courtesy of the Rhodes College Department of English Facebook page