Here’s our first look (Or my first look at least. I guess I shouldn’t speak on your behalf.) at the latest Herzog doc ‘Encounters at the End of the World’. The film made its festival run last year and ended up getting distribution through THINKFilm and Discovery Films. I was wondering if the whole THINKFilm fiasco would effect its release, but it looks like everything is going as planned. After watching the trailer, I’m excited for some classic Herzog. Stark imagery: check. Herzog narration: check. Crazy throat singing soundtrack: check. Also, fans of Herzog’s Wild Blue Yonder will appreciate the return to Blue Yonder, the uninhabitable planet with an unusual frozen atmosphere. (Probably have to see the film for this connection.) Overall, I’m pretty damned excited. For more info, visit the films official website, and be sure to check out the trailer below or click away to the larger prettier version over at Yahoo Movies.
June 4th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Awesome. I’ve been waiting for the trailer, so thanks. This was actually the closing night selection at the MSPIFF (http://getafilm.blogspot.com/2008/05/on-horizon-encounters-at-end-of-world.html). There is one sequence underwater that I will literally never forget.
June 6th, 2008 at 6:09 am
It’s going to be one of the best documentaries of all times.
January 14th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Herzog’s film is deceptive. All the more deceptive for the amount of people it has reached. Antarctica is a great place. Lots of people work there. But watching the film you’d think they were all Americans with huge egos who think that they are predestined to be there (except for one or two geologists who seem to have their feet on the ground). Going to exclusively American bases when more than 40 countries operate in some way down there is misleading when trying to characterize how people interact with that environment. I worked down there for a different organization which took me to bases run by four different countries none of which were American. They all had different cultures but nowhere was there the same egotism or scrounging for meaning as in Herzog’s film.
I live in America and when I first got down to Antarctica I would try to shoe-horn my experience into the narratives and photographic essays which I had read about and which impelled me to seek adventure down there in the first place. In fact my early photos are a mimicry of what I thought I would find.
I sifted experiences validating those which resonated with mainstream adventure culture: inventing deeper meaning in the solitudes which I found. Upon arriving on one of Antarctica’s ice shelves one of the first things I did after mooring was drive 5km inland with a colleague and friend of mine and tried to imbue the ageless longing that had been gleaned by previous explorers. But if I was honest with myself, I was disappointed to see a mass of ice which was large and flat and much like looking at a barren stretch of useless land. Over 15 months I came to love that place; but for what it was, not what I wanted it to be.
It seems like the interviewees in Herzog’s film were forcing their experiences into what they thought they might find or into the great adventure narratives of those who came many years before them, or into something that just sounded cool. It seemed like they were not actually approaching the place with any degree of humility.
In short I would be embarrassed if that film represented me. With no indication that other countries operate down there and that the characters in that film are the only inhabitants, people will assume that it does represent me. I have yet to find a review which questions the premise and calls half-cocked documentertainment film what it is.