Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"Werner Herzog has long avowed that he hates documentaries and does not participate in the tradition. Eric Ames’s wonderful book lets us in on an open secret: ‘Herzog has. . . added to the vitality and visibility of documentary cinema internationally for more than four decades.’ I would go further: the best of the films that Herzog has made over his long career have been those that, if not called documentaries, cannot be labeled fictions. Werner Herzog’s challenges to the documentary tradition have inevitably become part of that tradition. This book shows us how." —Linda Williams, University of California, Berkeley
"
Ferocious Reality is excellent. The book centers on how Herzog consistently undertakes an exploration of the limits of documentary cinema and engages with it as performative behavior, challenging its boundaries. Eric Ames analyzes a broad range of Herzog’s films and engages with an array of important theoreticians of documentary cinema. This book is first-rate and innovative." —Brad Prager, author of
The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and TruthTable of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
The Minnesota Declaration
Introduction: Werner Herzog, Documentary Outsider
1. Sensational Bodies
Game in the Sand
Handicapped Future
Land of Silence and Darkness
Wodaabe
2. Moving Landscapes
The Dark Glow of the Mountains
Fata Morgana, La Soufrière
Lessons of Darkness
Wheel of Time
3. Ecstatic Journeys
Huie’s Sermon
Bells from the Deep
Pilgrimage
4. Baroque Visions
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
Death for Five Voices
God and the Burdened
5. Cultural Politics
Fitzcarraldo
Ballad of the Little Soldier
Ten Thousand Years Older
The White Diamond
6. Reenactments
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Wings of Hope
Rescue Dawn
7. Autobiographical Acts
I Am My Films
Portrait Werner Herzog
My Best Fiend
Grizzly Man
Conclusion: Herzog’s Vérité
Encounters at the End of the World
The Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Notes
Index
