Last words

An old man in voluntary exile on the island of Spinalonga, close to Crete, is reluctant to talk; preferring to play the lyre at night in a tavern. A couple of police officers, in the purest Abbot and Costello style, constantly repeat the same words. As do a fisherman, a waiter … nothing seems to make sense in this innovative and hilarious short film, and yet, it has it all. Herzog borders the narrative limits of fiction and documentary to talk to us about the value of the word and its loss as a result of repetition. To do so, he turns to an ancient, rundown, yet beautifully filmed geographic framework. It is the first island of this programme, an island created by the Venetian Occupation that broke off from Crete to make it stronger and impregnable.

WERNER HERZOG
(Munich, 1942)

Of humble origins and self-taught, Werner Herzog founded his own film production company at the age of 20. Between 1963 and 1967, he filmed his first short films and began one of the most unique careers in the world’s cinematography, combining fiction feature films, documentaries and operas, working as a director, scriptwriter and actor. Founder of the New German Cinema, his work unceasingly merges fiction and documentary. Filmed to the limit, his films are populated with troubled anti-heroes who face a hostile environment in a fight lost beforehand.   It is the epic of failure or as he calls it in his book: the conquest of the useless. In the outcome, there is only room for madness, annulment or death.  Herzog is one of the few filmmakers that has filmed on the five continents. 

Filmography:

Signs of Life (1968)
The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969)
Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)
Handicapped Future (1971)
Land of Silence and Darkness (1971)
Fata Morgana (1972)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974)
How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)
Heart of Glass (1976)
Stroszek (1977)
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Woyzeck (1979)
Huie's Sermon (1981)
God's Angry Man (1981)
Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Ballad of the Little Soldier (1984)
The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1984)
Where the Green Ants Dream (1984)
Cobra Verde (1987)
Herdsmen of the Sun (1989)
Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990)
Jag Mandir (1991)
Scream of Stone (1991)
Lessons of Darkness (1992)
Bells from the Deep (1993)
The Transformation of the World into Music (1994)
Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995)
 Little Dieter Needs to Fly(1997)
My Best Fiend (1999)
Wings of Hope (2000)
Invincible (2001)
Wheel of Time (2003)
The White Diamond (2004)
Grizzly Man (2005)
The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)
Rescue Dawn (2007)
Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (2009)
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010)
Into the Abyss (2011)
On Death Row I + II (2012/2013)
Queen of the Desert (2015)