Civil suits. That have zogby is a film legend the german director has made over 70 feltons ranging from art house to big hollywood productions hes traveled to the ends of the earth and peered into the depths of the human soul. He mentions the movie the most. Hes created iconic characters to images in feature films and documentaries. Always searching for a deeper truth his perspective is investigative and radically subjective van i have songs the adventurer. We met up with this great cinematic storyteller in munich where his story began. When did it become clear to you that you had to and could make films. When i was around 14 or 15 years old when various things happened at the same time which made my fate apparent to me. Among them was that i would make films that i was also a kind of poet. He hated and it was always clear to me that i would do this better than others. And it was also clear that since i knew little about film and had seen almost nothing i would have to invent cinema myself. Is. This in the. Very 1st feature film was a declaration of war on the triviality of postwar german cinema. And this anarchic surreal and disturbing drama about towards raising a riot at a correctional facility caused controversy upon its release in 1970. S. Showing the point of view of outsiders and people on society its fringes became helps ogs trademark. In 1979 released nosferatu his amash to f. W. More now silent film classic much more than a remake it was his 1st Big International production the night it suited could be duty. But it could give you blood personally. Please let me do it its you. Forget it its hardly worth mentioning just a little cut. Even you know as i feel youve lived in los angeles in the heart of the dream factory for many years. Youve said you dont really feel part of the german film scene but in the us you enjoy a cult status as a bavarian in hollywood hollywood. Since even because you know the cult status is a term you should only touch with pincers. But it gets really wild when i show up in brazil for example or in russia poland ireland or algeria all hell breaks loose when i show up there with films. You say im part of the city with a dream factory but no im not part of it and i dont really belong to a german film either i actually belong to something more regional to the variant films from the baroque in the world weary and thats why i sometimes say that apart from me. The 2nd would have been the only person able to make this car all go. Its going to do more who couldnt. Fitzcarraldo is the story of an eccentric adventurer aiming to build an opera house in the amazon rain forest. Fitzcarraldo was a visionary with a mission. But the fact that you dont see what comes up and. Someone who is prepared to defy gravity to realize his lifes dream pushing boundaries is a constant theme and hair talks work. Hes into if youve been an extreme environments extreme situations what drives you to this day to seek out these extremes. He says makes the dont actually see counter extremes rather i consider what i do to be normal. People are always saying shooting in the amazon rain forest is so extreme. But look its just a forest. This is more involved. Katsav return to the jungle again for the vietnam war drama rescue dawn that was a big american production but headstock is also a nonconformist in hollywood for. A period with the will of his own kind of guy. And a passion for unhinged characters. Not just. With the general youve called bad lieutenant of a very in film solvents for a while and baroque. Wilder than the wildest drinkers at oktoberfest it really goes to extremes and. Back to the big. Surely. What for all still dancing. See how you never went to film school thank goodness you dont think much of them schools why. I think theyre completely misconceived. And basically poor film students are cooped up there for way too long. For 3 or 4 years. In 3 or 4 years they could shoot 3 features instead of sitting around there learning film theory or other such nonsense. They can learn everything they need to know in a week so you can see Everything Else is Technical Committee left to the technicians and take in this disconnect to. See if you can learn about filmmaking from veron or has a song on line for example who looks use a storyboard in concert instrumentals to cowards you can learn the same switzer filmmaking. But theres more scripted ro film school i founded the rogue film school. It was designed to be the exact opposite of everything youd normally learn in film school and. This i. Can do give us there are only 2 things i tell people theyre really learning. The 1st time out or pick a safety lock using a surgical instrument. And 2nd how to fake a filming permit to not get caught. In lets recently ive switched to doing more workshops. Things are just as something in the amazon rain forest in peru. And in the 1st minute of the 1st meeting i said the topic of your show. The framework is delirium in the jungle. See what you can come up with and deliver the results in 9 days time and some great films came out of it with. A good eye the wrath of god was also shot in the south american jungle its the tale of a 16th century spanish conquistador searching for el dorado this feverish drama tackles imperialism greed and meddling mania shot in documentary style it follows a good honest historical suicide mission. In the end klaus kinski a good day goes mad in a scene that wrote film history. Not. With. A good eye and later fitzcarraldo r. T. Made headlines during shooting largely due to the unpredictable lead actor klaus kinski he made 5 films with hats on the works through their productive love hate relationship in a documentary. They dont want to go public and if i was there or. More than that the darker it was a rich person who started small now the yorks didnt talk much about you but then because of that you know. I was not looking so i was im probably going to join the Sports Committee and im the president can. Be sucked into this and the 2nd right and got this feeling. Some green lost didnt get lost in your star theyre still actors as extreme as klaus kinski was he intended instance extreme i dont consider him extreme one can see he was kinski obvious. And in a certain sense he was a singular figure but he wasnt the best actor i worked with. The deepest and best one was bruno s who played the title roles in costume house. Ive worked at the worlds best with christian bale. Nicolas cage Nicole Nicole kidman. Tom cruise it is then why no one. Not any one of them. Ever came close to porno as is the charisma. Or his ability to convey isolation and parady. To write this blog that was likely due to his real life as a musician she practically 23 years after school from his childhood onwards he kept getting put away in correctional institutions and later in jail and then other places where he didnt belong. In the skittish scene i didnt mind. Being in the states but with little subtle yet big fish he did loose a little spot on the side that didnt find him and think. Just listening to stuff the clip just released. Is big. City not just a fairly good. There are others who have similar biographies but who dont have the depth and presence onscreen employ no a stand. Pales in comparison. As does nicholas cage nicolas cage and tom cruise to talk. Then i had thought worked with tom cruise on the Action Thriller jack reacher but this time had socks did in front of the camera playing an evil gang leader i. Spent my 1st winter wearing a tech mans coat out in one. Case before the frostbite turned green. The how was it how did you manage to be that evil. Or was it was ever this totally effortless work. So i didnt have to do a screen test and i knew that i could do it with us i earned good money for being terrifying on screen. That hes. Been so many other stick not. Van i have thought has his own unique perspective on the world and people his documentaries also focus on eccentric and obsessive types like fanatical Animal Rights activist Timothy Treadwell. Im here with one of my favorite pairs expressed a chocolate chocolate has been with me for the grizzly man spent his summers in alaska and lost all sense of distance between himself and the bears examples out there. Are. Now those in the end he was himself killed by a bear. My. Jury is going after treadwells death in 2003 hertzog followed his trail right to the bitter and. Skipped and. Taught for 2 moves he trained for and on so theres an audio recording of the death of Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend. Libby both of them were eaten by a bear eaten alive piece by piece or did say and the distributors and producers absolutely wanted this recording to be in the film and so i said ok ill listen to it. And i listened to it and it was so incredibly horrifying that i said only over my dead body will this make it into the film he comes to see an infant can turn into. 2 must never listen to this i never heard her pimp ever go into. The sink you know you should not keep it you should destroy it yeah. Its anything she can see it since ethical boundary individually toward because the dignity and the privacy surrounding an individuals death must not be violated. Period period perfect. Yet hair thug didnt shy away from interviewing condemned prisoners awaiting execution for as many series on death row. As a german coming from a different historical background and being a guest in the United States i respectfully disagree with a practice of Capital Punishment and help me move forward ive watched several episodes of your series on death row what boundaries were you confronted with there. When see. Its mention im told this when you talk with and film people on death row with people who know that theyre going to be executed in 8 days. And if there is no escaping that then of course there are certain boundaries there. Respect respect dignity. Due to respect the condemned persons human dignity. Same sparring this is one of them. In order to film a death row inmate you have to be invited by him in writing. I was behind the camera you only ever hear my voice and behind the camera i wore a formal suit in time which i almost never do it was a sign i respect you respect. They were always very open with you. Meant for me right the very 1st moment. And thats a question of how you work as a director. You can only do that if you know the heart of man. If you can look deep into their souls then it works. Looking at your films the boundaries between documentary and feature film are really fluid. Do you still differentiate between them. Oh sure theres a big difference isnt much i also recognise. Me but i dont worry about it for me theyre all films. For you once said facts do not constitute truth per se. In this age of the internet and fake news whats the truth beyond the facts that you seek. If you have the facts can be misleading the truth is created or certain layers deeper layers are created through stylization through invention through imagination. The supposedly realistic picture often seen in documentaries is a misconception. Which is why i say i invent things too because they serve the truth better than the found. In folk. Back in south america again in the impenetrable tropical rain forest of guyana against the spectacular backdrop of chi to a falls a mythical location for the indigenous population. This is where have taught me the White Diamond a documentary about dreams and the limitations of technology. The dream of flying a floating above the earth here to hertz og dared to experiment. In that case we had the music 1st. So in the rain forest the camera man asked me how are you going to do it with the rhythm in the shooting center on my gave him headphones and said listen. This is how well do it would be understood immediately. Else reisa goes music evokes the beauty of nature and its vulnerability. To the scene im to me all there were one and a half 1000000 swifts which came out of the sky in a huge swarm and flew in circular movements into their nests behind a huge waterfall. Goodness and it was overwhelming. And the music is equally overwhelming. The sound sorry these who 1st raised the singers were sardinians who almost all have prehistoric voices. And they started singing with far too much energy and the meter was far too clear so i stood up and made flying movements for them and they understood. And suddenly the movement became that of an eagle gliding from shreve. Enhance august films music itself is often a performer such as in the chauvet cave where dreiser goes music brings the prehistoric paintings to life. In 2019 the van i had thought Foundation Awarded the prize to reisa he was praised for creating spaces with his music that were larger than what could be seen on the screen. That is so im sick of doing business here in new york hes an extraordinary visionary. 2 and dazed in the dark even tough hes able to transform an entire world with music and to transform a world of images and suddenly the combination of music and images gives rise to something new and different that the audience can perceive and experience in a different way. Than i have towards relationship with music is a story of its own. He has also staged many operas going back to wagner again and again his 1st time was knowing clean at the by a white festival in 1987. Many of your colleagues vendors last frontier were also supposed to direct and buy rights but they shied away from doing it whats so difficult about staging wagner is that he can help operates according to different rules. From directors counted. Spector used the same criteria and the same working methods as they do in the cinema that was always clear so i told the singers and the others that we had to forget that i work in film and i said that we had a task and that there would only be an opera when the whole world transformed into music and you can see belt in music from it. So its unfair back to film youve been in some very extreme places in the mountains in the amazon underwater in the desert on the ice caps is there anything else that youre still seeking or that youd like to explore more. Id like to go to the space station or to the moon. Or id like to make a short visit to mars if that ever becomes possible mobs in this and. This is bavaria still your home even though you havent lived here for 20 years or you leave and toss in many could mark a Cultural Roots are here by my 1st language was a very and i miss it actually and when im traveling around the world i miss the fact that i never hear bavarian dialect being spoken. Ish i defended this incident of it its a taco mist consensus and. Yes scott its a cinch to its own country it. Will someday miss the tumbling of the earth apocalyptic imagery more than 50 years after launching his career cats are still seeks soul schemes on the edges of the planets. Plans to burst forth he calls this what youre doing here. Is middle of you have been winning prizes for your Lifetime Achievement for 10 years now this time its from the european film academy. How does that feel. So next time i mean if you distances go taste well to begin with i think its crow task is really more of course its a little strange because im still in the middle of my work. And now my output is higher than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Last year i made 3 films my. Mothers need 6 to 8 years to do that. The day before yesterday i was still shooting in norway on a new film and in less than a week ill be in mexico to continue it. Isnt so much to get this prize 10 years after i stopped making films and have to be rolled onto the stage in a wheelchair. He ordered to other than to help thank you in spite of the pleasure of. The to a. Future. Farewell electric power. A. Stimulus package could keep Hydrogen Power to the floor for. Germany blast. Left in the. Red. In 30 minutes on d w. Morning the issues are not for beginners. Never creations of god those osorio. Playful glamorous. Theyre sought after by women the world over. The colombian designer finds inspiration in florence for his stunning footwear. Buruma. 16. W. Is for me it. Is for you. As for help. Beethoven is for her. Is for the. Beethoven is for us. Is for the movement. Beethoven 202250th anniversary here on deal here. Like. Mongoloids is. Good for the russian soul. It runs deep. So many different walks of life. Some are pumping. Oddly trying but all of this comes straight from the heart just want to see it even when theres no more delusion the mushroom. From news of the world to their final resting place the russians on g. W. Documentary. This is news flying from berlin battleground bella whos more mass protests as antigovernment demonstrators step up the pressure on hard line leader alexander lukashenko. Hundreds are arrested and dragged away by Security Forces in the capital minsk but the prodemocracy activists believe their numbers make them an unstoppable force. Authorities warn there could be mass fatalities as wildfires ravaged 3 u. S. States thousands of people who fled to safety are now returning home