[Reader-list] Invitation: 2nd week of Strange Places – Strange People - The Documentaries of Werner Herzog,Bangalore

[rohitrellan at aol.in]

Greetings from the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan!

This is a reminder not to miss the 2nd weekend of our film programme based on 
the documentaries of the inspired German film maker, Werner Herzog, curated by 
Mr. M.K. Raghavendra, Bangalore’s well-known film critic and cinephile, who will 
be present at a Q&A after the screening on June 11th.

Event:                  Strange Places – Strange People
                               The Documentaries of Werner Herzog
                                Curated and introduced by M.K. Raghavendra
Date:                    10-11, 2011
Time:                    6.30 p.m.
Venue:                Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan
      
All are welcome! For further details, please call the Bhavan: 2520 5305/6/7/8 or 
visit our website: www.goethe.de/bangalore

Friday June 10, 2011
6.30 p.m.: Land of Silence and Darkness (82 min.)

Saturday June 11, 2011
6.30 p.m.: Fata Morgana (74 min.)
Q & A session with M.K. Raghavendra

About the films:
Werner Herzog’s documentaries invite comparison with his fiction films because 
they deal with the same issues but they are also more successful (especially in 
his later work) because of the tendency in the fiction films for Herzog to 
solicit scornful responses out of the spectator.

The documentaries selected for the screenings fall into three groups. The first 
group can be roughly categorised as ‘adventure’ films and these films include La 
Soufriere about a volcano which was about to erupt in the West Indies, but did 
not, The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1985) which is about mountaineer Reinhold 
Messner’s attempt to climb two peaks in the Karakoram Mountains and The Great 
Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1973), a film about a ski-flier and an unabashed 
piece of hero-worship.

The films in the second category can be classified as ‘parables of power’ and 
these include an astonishing film about a Los Angeles preacher - God’s Angry 
Soldier (1980). Another film (Echoes from a Sombre Empire, 1990) is about 
Jean-Bedel Bokassa a former captain in the French Army who crowned himself 
Emperor of the ‘Central African Empire’ until he was deposed and his country 
renamed the ‘Central African Republic’.

There is only one film from the third category – films about the marginalised 
and the socially segregated. The Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) is a 
magnificent film because Herzog is not interested in ‘victims of apathy’ but in 
the cognition of the world through the senses.

Herzog’s wanderings take him to the corners of the world and it may be expected 
that the filmmaker has a great formal sense of the landscape (e.g. Heart of 
Glass – 1976). The selection therefore concludes with Fata Morgana (1971) a 
mysterious film shot largely in the Sahara.

About M.K.Raghavendra:
A film and literary critic/scholar, M.K. Raghavendra is the recipient of the 
National Award (Swarna Kamal) for best film critic for the year 1996. He was 
awarded a two-year Homi Bhabha Fellowship in 2000-01 to research into Indian 
popular film narrative as well as a Goethe-Institut Fellowship in 2000 to study 
post-war German cinema. He has written extensively on European and Indian cinema 
for Indian and international publications as well as on literature. He has been 
on the film selection jury for both feature and non-feature film sections of the 
Indian Panorama at the International Film Festival of India. He has taught 
cinema in India and abroad and has also taught creative writing. He was one of 
the two India-based film critics invited in 2002 to participate in the Sight and 
Sound 'Ten Best Films' international poll conducted every ten years. He has just 
completed two books - Narration and Meaning in Indian Popular Cinema which 
attempts, among other things to interpret it in the context of Indian social 
history - and Fifty Indian films: Critical Studies, which brings together his 
critical essays on the most important Indian films, along with an appropriate 
introduction. The latter was published by Harper Collins India. 

We look forward to welcoming you at the Bhavan for the screenings.

With best wishes,

Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan
716 CMH Road
Indiranagar 1st Stage
Bangalore 560 038
Ph: +91 80 2520 5305/06/07/08-203
Fax: +91 80 2520 5309
arts at bangalore.goethe.org
www.goethe.de/bangalore
www.goethe.de/india