The Venice Film Festival will fete German filmmaker Werner Herzog with its honorary Golden Lion at its forthcoming 81st edition.
Accepting the honor, Herzog said: “I feel deeply honored to receive a Lifetime Achievement Honorary Golden Lion by the Venice Biennale. I have always tried to be a Good Soldier of Cinema, and this feels like a medal for my work. Thank you.”
The filmmaker, often known for his biting humor, added: “However, I have not gone into retirement. I work as always. A few weeks ago, I just finished a documentary in Africa, Ghost Elephants, and at this moment, I am shooting my next feature film, Bucking Fastard, in Ireland. I am developing an animated film, based on my novel, The Twilight World, and I am acting the voice of a creature in Bong Joon Ho’s upcoming animated film. I am not done yet.”
Born in Munich in 1942, Herzog made his first film at 19. He dropped out of college, where he briefly studied history and literature. His credits since then include a diverse range of features. They include Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
He has also published poetry and books of prose that include Of Walking in Ice, Conquest of the Useless, and recently The Twilight World, a novel. He staged about a dozen operas – in Bayreuth and at La Scala in Milano – and other opera houses around the world. Herzog has also acted in films, among them Jack Reacher, The Mandalorian, and guest roles in The Simpsons.
Venice head Alberto Barbera described Herzog as a “physical filmmaker and indefatigable hiker” who is always “testing our ability to look, challenging us to grasp what lies beyond the appearance of reality, and probing the limits of filmic representation in an unflagging search for a higher, ecstatic truth and new sensorial experiences.”
“Establishing himself as one of the major innovators of New German Cinema with films such as Signs of Life; Nosferatu the Vampyre; Aguirre, the Wrath of God; and Fitzcarraldo, Bad Lieutenant, Port of Call: New Orleans, and Grizzly Man, he has never ceased from testing the limits of the film language, belying the traditional distinction between documentary and fiction, and at the same time proposing a radical investigation of the topics of communication, the relationship between images and music, and of the infinite beauty of nature and its inevitable corruption,” Barbera said.
“Herzog’s career is both fascinating and hazardous because it involves total commitment and putting oneself on the line to the point of physical risk, where catastrophe constantly lurks. A brilliant narrator of unusual stories, Herzog is also the last heir of the great tradition of German romanticism, a visionary humanist, and a tireless explorer dedicated to perpetual wandering, in search (as he said) «of a decent and fitting place for mankind, a Landscape of the Soul.”
Venice runs August 27th to September 6th.
