Thomas Mauch

“Nothing is typical for Werner, only the atypical is typical for him.” This is just one of many attempts to characterize Werner Herzog. Documentary filmmaker Thomas von Steinaecker spoke to actors, directors, directors of photography and producers who have worked with Herzog over his long career—including directors Chloé Zhao, Joshua Oppenheimer and Wim Wenders, singer Patti Smith and actors Nicole Kidman, Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson. We also hear from Herzog himself, with extraordinary anecdotes about film locations and shoots, his admiration for Lotte Eisner, and his eternal search for beauty. The interviews are carefully punctuated by archive footage of Herzog never seen before, iconic excerpts from his feature films and documentaries, and his cameos in cartoon series such as The Simpsons. Together they create a kaleidoscopic image of a radical visionary and dreamer, and of his very own “Werner World.”

Saroyanland is a docu-drama focusing on the journey of famous writer William Saroyan to the birthplace of his Armenian family Bitlis, in Turkey in 1964. While retaking the same road, the film aims to understand Saroyan's unique attitude to belonging, witnessing the self-discovery of a man who followed the traces of his Armenian ancestors.

Berlin during the Nazi reign: Young music student Ursula is a talented musician and a fervent admirer of the "Führer". When she is asked to assist renowned composer Broch, who was ordered to compose a cantata for Hitler′s 50th birthday, it first seems like a dream fulfilled. Over the time, Broch and Ursula fall in love, and her relationship with the former communist gradually changes Ursula′s perspective on the realities of Nazi Germany. But falling in love with a Nazi means a huge moral conflict for Broch.

It was the biggest escape in the history of the Berlin Wall: in one historic night of October 1964, 57 East-Berliners try their luck through a tunnel into West Berlin. Just before the last few reach the other side, the East German border guards notice the escape and open fire. Remarkably, all the refugees and their escape agents make it out of the tunnel unscathed, but one border guard is dead: 21-year-old officer Egon Schultz.

Late 17th Century: Anne de Grandcamp and Lucie de Fontenelle, two little girls from Normandy, arrive at the Saint-Cyr school founded by Madame de Maintenon for educating the daughters of impoverished nobles ruined in wars and making them into free women. Madame de Maintenon is the secret wife of Louis XIV, and empowered by his support, she offers "her" two hundred fifty girls a playful and avant-garde education. Anne and Lucie, two inseparable friends, allow themselves to be carried away by the promise of a bright future. But Maintenon has arrived at the pinnacle of power through scheming and debasing herself and she now fears the fires of hell. She is counting on her model school to atone for her past sins.

Filme sobre a tempestuosa e também lendária relação de trabalho entre dois mitos do cinema, Werner Herzog e Klaus Kinski, e seus planos independentes e simultâneos de um matar ao outro. Um relacionamento de amor e ódio, que é um complicado quebra-cabeças para quem está de fora, mas ao mesmo tempo revela a profunda confiança entre um diretor e um ator. Uma rede de coincidências levou Herzog, então um estudante de 13 anos, a encontrar Kinski no mesmo apartamento em Munique. Em um ataque de raiva, Kinski destruiu todos os móveis do lugar. Era apenas um de seus acessos de fúria. Assim, Herzog sabia o que o esperava quando, alguns anos mais tardes, chamou Kinski para trabalhar em Aguirre, A Cólera dos Deuses. Herzog e Kinski trabalharam juntos em cinco filmes.

Sweety Barrett is a giant of a man with the mind of a child. An easy target in a corrupt world, Sweety becomes embroiled in a smuggling operation unleashing a spiral of dangerous and unexpected events.

Orson Welles' archives of unfinished/never released movies and the last years of his life from the perspective of Oja Kodar (life and artistic partner of Orson Welles in his last years).

Quatro policiais disfarçados se infiltram em uma gangue de hooligans esperando chegar aos seus líderes. Para um dos quatro, a linha entre "trabalho" e "arruaça" torna-se mais clara como o passar do tempo. . .

Poetic documentary about the deconstruction of a railroad track in South Germany.

Poetic documentary about the deconstruction of a railroad track in South Germany.

For many years the old Waller worked as a railwayman. After Waller is informed that "his" track will be closed down and that he will be retired, he walks the route for one last time and starts to remember his life along the way: Beginning in his childhood in the 1920s, he commemorates the death of his great love as well as he recalls the legal battle with his illegitimate daughter.

Katja Junge plays the title role in this West German romantic drama, directed by noted cinematographer Thomas Mauch. Maria is just as girl who can't say "Nein," thus she goes through several lovers before the plot proper gets underway. When Maria finally falls in love for real, it is with repressed astronomer Robert Duessler. Afraid to make physical contact, Duessler prefers to gaze at Maria from a distance through his telescope. Not surprisingly, the film's title translates to Mary of the Stars.

Making-of documentary that covers "Cobra Verde," Herzog's last film with Kinski before Kinski's death. This is the documentary that registers the behind the scenes moments of "Cobra Verde", the last project that united director Werner Herzog to actor Klaus Kinski. The notorious and infamous relation between the two filled Cinema theatres with masterpieces, but also filled pages of Cinema History with mutual declarations of both love and hate.

The Distant Land (German: Das weite Land) is a 1987 Austrian-German drama film directed by Luc Bondy. It was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Based on a play by Arthur Schnitzler, which is generally referred to in English as The Vast Domain and was also adapted by Tom Stoppard as Undiscovered Country.

Celebrated West German director Alexander Kluge presents this drama that strings together vignettes of events taken from everyday newspaper headlines. Germans are shown in their reactions to World War II, minorities, and the elderly. A side plot follows a meeting between former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and East German leader Erich Honecker.

An autobiographical short film by Werner Herzog made in 1986. Herzog tells stories about his life and career. The film contains excerpts and commentary on several Herzog films, including Signs of Life, Heart of Glass, Fata Morgana, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Fitzcarraldo, and the Les Blank documentary Burden of Dreams. Notable is footage of a conversation between Herzog and his mentor Lotte Eisner, a photographer. In another section, he talks with mountaineer Reinhold Messner, in which they discuss a potential film project in the Himalayas to star Klaus Kinski.

A poignant film essay about 'superfluous people' facing up to a moment of crisis in their lives.

The ultimate answer to all your problems: a slap in the face.

The Cold War is peaking again in divided Germany in the early 1980s. How to deal with the upcoming nuclear annihilation shows this Alexander Kluge short.

The emotion and feelings should not be confused with sentimentality. Emotion is ancient and more powerful than any artistic expression. The film observes young couples face difficulties while trying to move their love experiences clear decision making. A film full of ideas, details and associations, fictional scenes, documentary footage, archival materials and opera music.

Reverend Huie Rogers is a preacher at the Bible Way Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Brooklyn. He is the topic of this short film, during which launches into an epic call-and-response denunciation of human hubris, greed, corruption and failure. The use of lengthy shots present it less like a sermon and more a performance, and induce an almost trance-like state.

The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.

The third episodical film, after Deutschland im Herbst and Der Kandidat, in which notable German film makers reflect on the state of their country.

Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, Fitzcarraldo, fã do tenor italiano Enrico Caruso, sonha em construir uma casa de ópera na remota cidade de Iquitos, no alto Amazonas.

Doctors say that Veronika, a woman in her 20s, is schizophrenic. She is compliant, which makes her an easy target for men. She's religious, believing she is God's favorite child; she searches for Jesus. She has sent a letter to a filmmaker suggesting her life as the subject for a movie. We see her raped then take up with a series of men she believes are Jesus, each willing or insistent on sex. A young man with his own crisis of faith invites her to join a cult. We see her involuntarily committed to an asylum from time to time where medication and constraints await. Her wealthy parents are helpless. Will a medical professional ever talk to her? If one did, would it help?

The documentary follows Gene Scott, famous televangelist involved with constant fights against FCC, who tried to shut down his TV show during the 1970s and '80s, and even argues with his viewers, complaining about their lack of support by not sending enough money to keep going with the show.

Made with an eye to the autumn of 1980 when the German parliamentary elections took place, The Candidate examines Germany’s history past and present and Franz Josef Strauß, the man who, as the CDU/CSU candidate, aspires to be elected to the most important political office in the land.

An impoverished young man from Sicily travels to Wolfsburg, West Germany to find work. He takes a job in the Volkswagen factory after he travels through Northern Italy by train.

An impoverished young man from Sicily travels to Wolfsburg, West Germany to find work. He takes a job in the Volkswagen factory after he travels through Northern Italy by train.

Gabi Teichert, a history teacher, is unhappy with the way history is portrayed in textbooks and is looking for an alternative, more practical approach to 'uncovering' the past, quite literally digging with the spade and dissecting books with hammers and drills.

Interview film with German director Werner Herzog revisiting the films he made up to ca. 1977.

Cahiers du cinéma critic Serge Daney asks whether The Kingdom of Naples is "leftist fiction, kitschy melodrama, photo-roman, a decadent chronicle of a city, opera in a minor key, or simply the first realistic narrative film by Schroeter?" It is all of these and more: an epic chronicle of proletarian family life in Naples from 1943 to 1972 that brilliantly captures the wretched poverty, overwrought passions, and political, religious and economic upheavals of Sicily across two generations. Schroeter assimilates neorealist aesthetics and class sympathies with the tempestuous excesses of popular melodrama, borrowing freely from Rossellini, Pasolini, Visconti, Brecht, and Rossini. (Facets)

The life and struggles of the German writer Heinrich von Kleist.

Com uma vida marcada por passagens em internatos e reformatórios, o alcoólatra Stroszek acaba de sair da prisão e passa a viver com a prostituta Eva. Ao lado do senhor Clemens Scheitz, um vizinho amigo e idoso, eles decidem ir para os Estados Unidos, procurando uma nova vida.

Erika and Franziska haven't seen each other for 4 years. 10 years earlier they both felt that they had the same chances in life: both were young, attractive and imaginative. They overlooked what would, right from the outset, separate them: their very different emotional make-up, their different character. In a long nighttime discussion the friends try to clear up these differences - not without some glimmer of hope.

Erika and Franziska haven't seen each other for 4 years. 10 years earlier they both felt that they had the same chances in life: both were young, attractive and imaginative. They overlooked what would, right from the outset, separate them: their very different emotional make-up, their different character. In a long nighttime discussion the friends try to clear up these differences - not without some glimmer of hope.

A documentary short examining the language and performance of auctioneering, filmed at the World Livestock Auctioneer Championship in Pennsylvania.

The clownish security chief of a West German business is obsessed with protecting his factory from fancied and real breaches, especially from groups such as The Red Army Faction. Ferdinand's paranoia and methods can't be contained by his company. The sympathetically-drawn Ferdinand's ludicrous actions recall those of the cynical, disastrous axis between fascism and big business in 1930's Europe: satire of the rise of private security.

In order to be reunited with Mahmood (Ören), a man she was promised to as a young girl, 20-year-old Shirin (Erten) leaves the life she had in a small village in Turkey in search of him.

An adaptation of Franz Kafka's classic story about Gregor Samsa, a man who awakes and sees himself suddenly turned into a repulsive insect.

Grischa e Heinrich são dois atores que, após um ensaio, acabam trancados no camarim e acabam se interessando um pelo outro, começando um relacionamento. Heinrich quer ter um filho com Grischa, porém ela não sabe como é conciliar a vida familiar com a profissional, fazendo com que ela comece a entrevistar mulheres trabalhadoras, ouvindo seus depoimentos sobre as dificuldades que encontraram e encontram por serem mulheres.

Roswitha runs an illegal abortion clinic in Frankfurt to support her student husband and children. When she is forced to close her practice she delves into political and social activism.

Short by Alexander Kluge.

Em 1561 o conquistador espanhol Gonzalo Pizarro parte em uma expedição pelos Andes buscando a lendária cidade de El Dorado, uma lenda contada aos espanhóis pelos índios. Uma expedição de dezenas de pessoas cruzou as montanhas do Peru, e percebendo o cansaço dos soldados e escravos, Pizarro designou um pequeno grupo para explorar a região, nomeando dois nobres como líderes. Conforme buscam El Dorado, a ambição começa a crescer em Lope de Aguirre que trai o companheiro e toma o controle do grupo para si. Em meio às intrigas, nenhum deles contava que a natureza seria o seu inimigo mais poderoso.

Outer space in 2034 is run by greedy corporations in a rundown bureaucracy. Two astronauts, who are not very smart, make their way with shady dealings, smuggling and spaceship wrecking.

Num mundo onde todos são anões, um grupo de jovens que moram num orfanato estavam cansados das regras, e resolvem se rebelar. Enquanto um deles é pego pelo diretor na fuga, os outros transformam a instituição em completa anarquia.

The Flying Doctors of East Africa (German: Die Fliegenden Ärzte von Ostafrika) is a 1969 documentary film by Werner Herzog about the "flying doctors" service of the African Medical and Research Foundation in Tanzania, Kenya, and Nairobi.

The Indomitable Leni Peickert is a loose, half-hour sequel to Alexander Kluge's second feature film, Artists in the Big Top: Perplexed. This shorter work, seemingly assembled from leftover footage from the longer film, continues the story of the circus owner Leni Peickert after she first abandoned her idea of a radical circus in favor of a job in television. It opens where the previous film left off, at a TV station where Leni and her friends have gathered as employees, attempting to infiltrate the corporate establishment with their own revolutionary ideas. This radicalism is somewhat undercut by the way that Kluge deliberately shoots down the low-cut blouse of one of these young revolutionaries, the camera eyeing her cleavage and then panning down, to the text she's reading, and then back up again, finding her sexuality ultimately much more interesting than her radicalism.

Katharina and Anne go on trips, visit cafés, acquaintances and parties. In doing so, they explore the chances of female emancipation in a male-dominated society. Katharina strives for a life without sentimental compulsion. She believes that she has succeeded, and therefore looks at the beloved friend Anne compassionate, as it can be good. Anne is learning the left jargon. But it is sheer helplessness. She says it's political commitment that she does not trust her friend Katharina, so Anne smiles as well.

Como seu pai antes dela, a dona de circo Leni Peickert (Hannelore Hoger) também quer levar o desempenho artístico a seu ponto máximo. Ao mesmo tempo, seu ideal é a naturalidade. Ela quer mudar o circo, mas suas inovações levam a empresa à bancarrota. “Se o capitalista faz aquilo de que gosta,/ e não aquilo que lhe traz vantagem,/ Não recebe apoio de ninguém”. Revigorada, Leni Peickert busca uma segunda chance, agora na televisão comercial

During World War II, three German soldiers are withdrawn from combat when one of them, Stroszek, is wounded. They are assigned to a small coastal community on the Greek island of Kos while Stroszek recuperates. The men become increasingly stir crazy in their uneventful new assignment. Stroszek eventually goes mad.

Early short by Werner Herzog shot while being on location in Greece shooting "Lebenszeichen".

Kluge’s short-film starring his sister/muse Alexandra.

In 1966, German film critic Theodor Kotulla — who would go on to become one of the New German Cinema's most uncompromising filmmakers — visited the set of Robert Bresson's "Mouchette" (1967) and created this half-hour documentary about the director. It won the 1967 German Film Award for best short documentary.

Short by Edgar Reitz.

Elizabeth is a young woman who seeks happiness excessively burning out all those around her.

Uma jovem, Anita G., rouba um pulôver para se aquecer. Cumprida a pena, ela faz várias tentativas de começar vida nova. Depois de uma fuga em ziguezague, vai parar de novo na cadeia. Os nazistas tinham levado seus pais. Ela vem do Leste e agora passa frio no Oeste. Três Alemanhas. Prêmio Especial do Júri do Festival de Veneza.

A short montage about rhythm, movement, and speed.

Early documentary by Edgar Reitz.