German director Werner Herzog is the principal Retrospective of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. Herzog will attend the Festival to present his films, conduct a Masterclass and will be honored with a Golden Alexander for his contribution to the art of cinema.

The full Retrospective, organized in collaboration with the Goethe Institute in Greece, will showcase the total of Herzog’s films, including the filmmaker’s fiction and documentary shorts and features, as well as projects made especially for television.

Accompanying the Herzog Retrospective, a bilingual (Greek and English) monograph of the filmmakers’ work will be presented by the Festival.

“Werner Herzog’s presence during the 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival is absolutely in tune with the spirit of the anniversary event. The Festival’s dedication to supporting the innovative and fresh voices of filmmaking, one of which Herzog remains despite his long career, is as unflinching as his own commitment to his art”, notes Festival Director Despina Mouzaki. Herzog’s first fiction feature, Signs of Life (1968) was actually shot in Greece, on the island of Kos, when Herzog was 24 years old; the film won him a Silver Bear at the 1968 Berlin film festival for best first film.

Herzog’s career is by nature and breadth not easily classifiable. A director who has been paradoxically labeled as outrageous, he has been shooting films since the early 1960s with remarkable agility, clarity and skill. He has also directed numerous operas and theater productions, as well as published several books of prose. He has said that he seeks “utopian things, space for human honor and respect, landscapes not yet offended, planets that do not exist yet”, while documentary filmmaker Errol Morris characterizes Herzog’s way as the “ecstatic absurdity [and] the confrontation with meaninglessness”. Herzog is a filmmaker who blends fact and fiction in a remarkable and utterly unique manner, a testimony of which is not only his personal involvement and touch in all his documentaries, but also his obsessive commitment to filming “the truth” in his fiction films. Another extraordinary feat of Herzog’s career is that his numerous films, none of which has been made for commercial reasons or with any assistance from the studio system (despite the fact that quite a few of them are US productions), have always seem to be independent of budget constraints. It appears that Herzog’s passion and eagerness for constantly working has found its way to secure that his projects will always get made.

THE FILMS OF THE WERNER HERZOG RETROSPECTIVE

FICTION

Signs of Life, 1968, 87 min, West Germany
Even Dwarves Started Small, 1970, 96 min, West Germany
Aguirre, the Wrath of God, 1972, 93 min, Mexico / Peru / West Germany
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser – Every Man for Himself and God Against All, 1974, 109 min, West Germany
Heart of Glass, 1976, 97 min, West Germany
Stroszek, 1976, 108 min, West Germany
Nosferatu, 1978, 103 min, France / West Germany
Woyzeck, 1979, 81 min, West Germany
Fitzcarraldo, 1982, 157 min, Peru / West Germany
Where the Green Ants Dream, 1984, 100 min, Australia / West Germany
Cobra Verde, 1987, 110 min, Ghana / West Germany
Scream of Stone, 1991, 105 min, Belgium / Canada / France / Germany
Invincible, 2001, 158 min, Germany / Ireland / UK / USA
Rescue Dawn, 2006, 126 min, USA

DOCUMENTARIES


Herakles, 1962, 12 min, West Germany
The Unprecedented Defence Of The Fortress Deutschkreuz, 1966, 15 min, West Germany
Last Words, 1967, 13 min, West Germany
The Flying Doctors of East Africa, 1969, 45 min, West Germany
Precautions Against Fanatics, 1969, 12 min, West Germany
Fata Morgana, 1970, 79 min, West Germany
Handicapped Future, 1971, 43 min, West Germany
Land of Silence and Darkness, 1971, 85 min, West Germany
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, 1973, 47 min, West Germany
How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck, 1976, 45 min, West Germany
No One Will Play With Me, 1976, 14 min, West Germany
La Soufriere, 1977, 31 min, West Germany
God's Angry Man, 1980, 44 min, English, West Germany
Huie's Sermon, 1980, 43 min, West Germany
Ballad of the Little Soldier, co-directed with Denis Reichle, 1984, 45 min, West Germany
Gasherbrum - The Dark Glow of the Mountains, 1984, 45 min, West Germany
Portrait Werner Herzog, 1986, 30 min, West Germany
Wodaabe – Herdsmen of the Sun, 1989, 52 min, France / West Germany
Echoes from A Sombre Empire, 1990, 93 min, France / Germany
Lessons of Darkness, 1992, 52 minutes, France / Germany / UK
Bells from the Deep, 1993, 60 min, Germany / USA
Little Dieter Needs to Fly, 1997, 80 min, France / Germany / UK
My Best Fiend, 1999, 95 min, Finland / Germany / UK / USA
Wings of Hope, 1999, 70 min, Germany
Pilgrimage, 2001, 18 min, UK
Wheel of Time, 2003, 80 min, Germany
The White Diamond, 2004, 87 min, Germany
Grizzly Man, 2005, 104 min, USA
The Wild Blue Yonder, 2005, 81 min, France / Germany / UK / USA
Encounters at the End of the World, 2007, 99 min, USA

TELEVISION

The French as Seen by... – Episode: Les Gauloises, 1988, 12 min, France
Giovanna d’ Arco, co-directed with Keith Cheetham, 1989, 127 min, Italy / UK
Film Lesson 1- 4, 1990, 240 min, Germany
Jag Mandir, 1991, 85 min, Germany
The Transformation of the World Into Music, 1994, 90 min, Germany
Gesualdo - Death for Five Voices, 1995, 60 min, Germany
2000 Years of Christianity – Episode: Christ and Demons in New Spain, 1999, 44 min, Germany