Werner Herzog Non Fiction: Part 2

Here is part 2 of my write up on the Herzog films I saw at Film Forum last week. For more info, part one is available here.

Pilgrimage (2001) – 35mm
An artistic, more experimental look at the way different cultures pray to god.

Jag Mandir (1991)
Jag Mandir is the documentation of a parade/festival put on in India as a way to document their dying culture. The film was less a documentary and more of just a way to capture this amazing festival.

Echoes from a Somber Empire (1990)
This was probably the film I liked the most of the 14 I saw. The movie follows a journalist who was held captive by Jean-Bédel Bokassa in the Central African Republic. Bokassa 13 years as leader of the CAR were extremely bloody. He cut the ears of thieves, killed and imprisoned many people for no reason and actually ate the flesh of some of his victims. An amazing story and an amazing film.

Wodaabe – Herdsmen of the Sun (1989)
This movie was about the Wodaabe tribe. From what I saw of it, it looked very intense. These people had amazing make up and looked completely out of control. They are a desert people and think everyone should be. Unfortunately, I got some important phone calls during the movie and I missed half of it to deal with some serious drama.

Huie’s Sermon (1980)
This film was just a document of a sermon given by one of the most intense men I have ever seen. He sung, danced, screamed and prayed to his congregation. He just walked around the room in a fury getting everyone excited and riled up under the love of god. Very powerful. He evoked a lot of James Brown. The money shot of the film is footage of a baptismal pool that pulls back to reveal that it is 50 feet in the air above the preacher. Amazing.

God’s Angry Man (1980)
Along with Somber Empire this was really the highlight of the films. It is a documentary about controversial televangelist Gene Scott. Originally the film looks to attack Scott, which would have been very out of character with a Herzog film, but eventually you really feel for Scott and are just really amazed by all the things he has accomplished. He really tells his side of the story in this movie. In many of Herzog’s documentaries he holds the camera just a bit too long on the subjects, creating small awkward moments of silence. This is turned on its head a bit in God’s Angry Man when Scott refuses to speak for a full five minutes. One of the best parts of the movie.

The Unprecedented Defense of Fortress Deutschkreuz (1966)
This is one of two fiction films in the retrospective. It is about four men who find an abandoned castle and start to believe that they are there to guard it. They dress up a as soldiers and try to defend the castle from invading farmers. Very strange, very pretty.

No One Will Play with Me (1976)
This was the other fictional film, although when dealing with 7 year old actors, there is sort of a blurred line. The touching story is about a small boy who is not accepted by his friends because he is poor and smells bad. He eventually befriends a girl who plays with him because he has a pet raven. He appreciates her friendship he gives her the raven, the only thing he has in life. The crowd applauded when it was over. Very moving.

The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969)
A film about a group of doctors who fly all over East Africa performing medicine on sick people. They fly in, do surgeries for a few days and then fly back. There is so much sickness and fighting, it was amazing that these people could keep doing this day after day. Another Herzog film filled with amazing people.

Handicapped Future (1971)
This movie was about children dealing with handicaps in Germany. They interview children and their parents about the problems they face. One woman was extremely embarrassed of her child and basically hid him from the world. It was tragic. The film pointed to the United States as a place much more tolerant of the handicapped. It showed a man living an almost normal life in the United States. Although 35+ years later I still see so many problems for the disabled in our society, I just can’t imagine how bad things were in Germany in the early 70’s.

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Werner Herzog Non-Fiction Part 1

Werner Herzog is my favorite director.  Since 1962 he has made 52 films on a wide variety of subjects.  He has made feature films and documentaries, often blending the two.  Until very recently he was most known for his film Fitzcaraldo although after the recent success of his documentary Grizzly Man he might be more known for that.  Many of his subjects feature driven people that go after something so obsessively they may seem insane.  Of all of his subjects, he might be the most interesting of all.  He literally moved a huge ship over a mountain, he threatened to kill one of his actors, he was shot during a TV interview, he walked thousands of miles across Europe because he thought it would cure a sick friend, and he once ate his shoe on film because he lost a bet.  Over the last few weeks Film Forum has done a retrospective of his non fiction films, as well as some documentaries that he loves.  They also showed several documentaries about him.  In three days I saw 12 of his films and two documentaries about him.  I am going to give little short reviews of each film I saw.  Of his 52 films I have now seen all but 13 of them, but Herzog just released a 6 disc set of his short films for sale on his website so I should get that number down very quickly.   

I Am My Films (Erwin Keusch & Christian Weisenborn, 1979)

Of all the films I saw this had the least amount of value to me.  Most everything covered in this documentary I had known from my readings on Herzog and other documentaries I have seen about him.  I did enjoy seeing footage of him as a younger man, and at times the film was very emotional.
Portrait Werner Herzog (1986)

A short self portrait.

The Ball Is a Scumbag (Rudolph Herzog & Christian Weisenborn, 2000)
Herzog’s son documents a conversation between soccer coaching legend Rudi Gutendorf and Herzog.  Gutendorf is an extremely interesting man and his conversations about soccer and life are wonderful, however some of my favorite parts were when he remembers actor Klaus Kinski, Herzog’s close friend and sworn enemy. 
Ten Thousand Years Older (2001)

This was the only film that I saw that I had seen before.  It was part of a collection of shorts called The Trumpet.  It documents one of the last civilized tribes 20 years after they first came into contact with white men.  Many of their tribe were wiped out by the chicken pox and they are now all wearing baseball caps and Disney tshirts.  The best part of the film is the interviews with tribesmen about having sex with white women.

Part 2 to follow soon.  Check below for the amazing footage of Herzog being shot while doing an interview.

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Art Or Porn?

There is that famous quote about obscenity from Justice Potter Stewart “I know it when I see it” and I feel like my work rarely crosses that threshold. I get asked about my work a lot and why I photograph so many porn stars and I figured I would take a minute to talk about that and how I see my work as far as pornography goes. Short answer is that I don’t see it that way 

I realized that a lot of the photos I post on this website are pretty photos of conventionally attractive women and that people are going to be looking at them for sexual gratification, but when I am shooting I don’t really think about it in a sexual way. I like nudity, and I know my audience, but the stuff I am mostly interested is desexualizing nudity and putting it in a different context. I often tell models to just do what they would be doing in their normal life and we just hang out in their homes and I occasionally take photos. The only difference is that they don’t have clothes on. 

I have obviously shot more adult stuff like when I used to shoot for Hustler or when I did a webseries for my friends at WoodRocket you really want to be looking at porn you could check out TeenPornHD or something and not my photography. I just wanna document my life as much as possible, even if some of it is posed. Werner Herzog explains his mix of fictional and documentary film work with the term ecstatic truth and I feel like that is something I am going for as well, even if it’s mostly just photos of porn girls butts. 

So why do I shoot mostly porn stars? Well part of the reason is that I dated an adult film actress many years ago and she introduced me to their friends and it just kept going until I was sort of known for it. But the main reason I prefer to shoot them over normal models is because of how comfortable they are naked. It’s so easy to get something that feels very “real” when someone isn’t thinking at all about modesty. There is just an ease there which you can get from other models, but it takes a lot longer. I remember one of the first nude shoots I ever did the girl was so uncomfortable naked that the photos were coming out really awkwardly so I had this idea for us to play Mario Kart for like 45 minutes while she sort of forgot about it. It actually worked out pretty well, but someone who gets naked for a living is always gonna be more comfortable right away and that’s important when you shoot as quickly as I do. 

So yeah that’s about it. I just wanted to write this up since people ask me about it a lot, especially other photographers and models so I figured this would be a good place to point them to if they asked. 

Self Portrait

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Teddy Blanks – 12.12.09

This is a super minimal update. It is getting late on Sunday and I wanted to get some stuff up.  My friend Jen who runs 1/2 of The Music Slut had her birthday yesterday at Brooklyn Bowl and she invited a bunch of bands like O’Death to play. I thought it was at night so I was gonna go late, but Teddy Blanks called me at 230PM and told me he was playing at 3. I got over there in time to catch the second half of his set.  I only shot a few pictures because I had planned on doing a gallery of the whole event but I ended up going to see the new Werner Herzog film My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? at IFC. It was amazing and despite my desire to see O’Death, the absolute right choice for a way to spend a Saturday evening. Anyway, check out all 8 of the photos I took of Teddy on Saturday.  And happy birthday Jen!

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Tck Tck Tck – 12.4.09

So I have managed to get on the press list for the WIRED store for whatever reason so I decided to check out another one of their parties.  I figured it would be good content for the Village Voice.  The event has something to do with global climate change, Kofi Annan and male models, but I am too tired to figure out how all that goes together.  Hopefully this link can explain some of it. I tend to be pretty interested in things without vowels.

Anyway, model Jamie Burke’s band Delilah played as did Theophilus London and Dan Black.  Mark Ronson supposedly DJ’d but apparently showing up two hours late for a 3 hour party was a mistake on my part.  I am actually pretty into Theo London after seeing him twice now (here’s pics from last time) and Delilah was not as bad as you would expect from a band fronted by a male model.

The publicists gave me a list of celebrities that RSVP’d several of which I know personally.  I made some inquires and found out they never actually RSVP’d but I guess convincing press to show up to your events is what publicists do. Not that I am killing myself to shoot celebs anyway, but it makes the Voice happy to get galleries like that. One celeb that did show up trumps pretty much everyone they had on their list. Abel fucking Ferrara.  If you don’t know anything about him, look him up.  He is pretty much the quintessential New Yorker and one of the least apologetic directors of all time. When he found out that the equally unapologetic Werner Herzog was remaking Bad Lieutenant he told him he could “Die in Hell”. Getting to meet him was an honor and makes taking photos reality show stars feel even more empty than it actually is.

I didn’t shoot a ton of pictures from the night because aside from showing up late I spent a lot of time watching Ease Da Man harass models, put Mishka stickers on everyone/everything and shove as many CK One samples into his pockets as humanly possible. I also spent as much time as possible flirting with a rad cocktail waitress who mildly resembled Sasha Grey (The picture of her holding olives does not do her justice, but it is really funny). All and all despite a severe lack of sleep and a mild lack of things to take photos of I had a pretty good time, and I am pretty sure everyone else did since the place was still packed at 1030 when they started kicking everyone out.

Anyway, if you want to check out the pictures from the WIRED Tck Tck Tck party click here.

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Exxxotica New York 2008 – 9.13.08

Exxxotica NYC is not actually in NYC.  It is in NJ.  It was going to be at least somewhere near NYC at the Meadowlands but they got kicked out and they ended up at the NJ Convention center, which was not that far away, but surely not to be confused with New York.  This was an adult industry showcase that featured porn stars by the bushel.  The event was sponsored by HotMovies, Featured my friend Doug’s Strip For Pain and of course Burning Angel showed up… So you know I had to be there.  It was a three day event, but I had to work Friday and watch the Dolphins lose Sunday so I only made it out for Saturday.  I think one day was more than enough though.  Despite all the madness it’s still a convention.  There were a lot of semi nude women roaming about, but they all just smiled and posed with creepy guys all day and signed autographs.  I wanted to hang out with my friends who were there, but they all had to pay attention to the fans and stuff.  I did have some fun though.  I met a girl who knows a bunch of my friends and has a HUG LIFE tattoo which is becoming increasingly common in our neck of the woods.  I spent a lot of time talking to her and the Pillow Fight League kids.  Steve Prue was there shooting and we talked shop a bit.  I found the Bombshell Bratz kids a web designer.  And Doug did his Strip For Pain thing like 10 times while I was there so I shot a lot of that.

Another thing about this convention is that it makes me realize how little I know about porn despite having a lot of porn friends.   I know a lot about “alt porn” but I didn’t recognize anyone.  The only people I knew there who weren’t alt people were Ron Jeremy who I have met several times now, Sasha Grey who is almost an alt girl and Jesse Jane who was on Entourage.

Speaking of Sasha Grey, anyone who mentions Werner Herzog and Monty Hellman among her favorite directors on myspace should be a friend of mine.  She has also worked with two of my porn friends Eon McKai and Joe Gallant.  I wanted to talk to her at the convention but she had a line of fans that seemed never ending. 

After the event I went back to the hotel where the BA kids were staying and hung out with the Pop Porn crew.  Stoya was there and we know like 1,000,000 of the same people and I feel like we bonded… but then again she was pretty drunk.  I also made friends with Lexi Love who seemed very unassuming and adorable until I Googled her.  She was pretty rad.  She lives in NYC so maybe I will have some photos of her naked on here one day.

There are like two hundred photos here, and I am not really excited about any of them.  The light was awful and nipples were completely banned.  It is pretty upsetting when it is more likely to see boobs at a bar than it is a porn convention.  Sigh…  You might dig the photos anyway, I guess there are some pretty funny ones.

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God’s Angry Man

One of my favorite Werner Herzog shorts, God’s Angry Man, is available on YouTube. It is broken up into 5 parts and the first part is posted below. You can check out the rest of it here. It is about 45 min long and pretty much amazing. It is an interview with a hate filled televangelist who by the end of the film you almost feel sorry for, or at least feel some connection with. Part 5 has my favorite part in the movie where he mocks the FCC by running around hitting toy monkeys on the head. I don’t think I can possibly explain how great it is, and I am not sure you can fully appreciate it without watching the rest of the movie, so please do.

Read my review of it from the first time I saw it here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_hsJx_dI40[/youtube]

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Encounters At The End Of The World

What’s this?  Two film reviews in two days? Back to back even?  Wow.  I moved to NYC to watch movies, this site should be nothing but film reviews.  However, I decided that taking photos of DJ’s and cute girls was more important than my film education so I have been super slack.  But this weekend was pretty good.

Anyway, if you know anything about me you should know that Werner Herzog is my favorite director.  As of yesterday have now seen 52 of his 54 films.  One thing you need to know about Herzog is that all of his films are really about him.  I think this is important to note for someone who is walking into one of his documentaries thinking that they are going to see a straight doc.  He talks to the camera, often putting himself in his opinions into the films more directly than most people are used to.  One of the biggest complaints about Grizzly Man was that they didn’t know who this narrator was butting into the film.  Well the problem is that you need to understand the man, to really get the films.  Herzog has spent his life making both documentaries and standard narrative films about people who are obsessed with something, and maybe a little bit crazy.  This describes Herzog perfectly.  Even the “bad” protagonists in his movies tend to reflect as much about the director as anything else.  In truth he is often far more interesting than any of his subjects and hopefully someone will do his life story justice on celluloid.

Anyway, his newest film, Encounters At The End Of The World at times reads like a nature film about Antarctica and in fact it is produced by the Discovery Channel’s film division, but at other times it is gloomy and depressive look at the end of the world.  And at other times is absolutely laugh out loud hysterical.   In order to prepare for the feirce snow storms one might expect in Antarctica people train with buckets on their heads painted with faces that had the packed Film Forum crowd crying with laughter.  The film is Herzog’s second film to deal with Antarctica , but his first time he actually set foot on the continent.  (Wild Blue Yonder was assembled from footage a friend of his shot.)  He has now made a movie on all seven continents.  So here, for the first time, is my list of my favorite Herzog films by continent!  Click description for trailers/ clips!

Africa: Cobra Verde
Antarctica: Encounters At The End Of The World
Asia: Little Dieter Needs To Fly
Australia: When Green Ants Dream
Europe: Even Dwarves Started Small
North America: Stroszek
South America: Fitzcarraldo

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMBnl2_e46k[/youtube]

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Be Kind Rewind

Be Kind Rewind is the new film from Michel Gondry. It is about a video store clerk (Mos Def) who has a moronic friend (Jack Black) who accidentally erases all the movies. So they start making new movies themselves based on the erased movies. For those who insanely don’t know who Michel Gondry he is the man who directed Eternal Sunshine On The Spotless Mind. He is probably the most brilliant living film director who’s name is not Werner Herzog. That being said, Be Kind Rewind meanders. It drops some random plot points and a number of things don’t make sense. (For example, the movies they make are called Sweded versions, but no reason what so ever is given for that.) It is not exactly the best story telling on earth. Gondry is probably a much stronger director than he is a writer (this is the second film he has written, his last film, Science Of Sleep he also wrote, while his first two films were written by Charlie Kaufman. Anyway, the amazingness of the film more than makes up for it. It is extremely funny, completely inventive and overwhelmingly touching. Mos Def is sort of incredible playing a roll that is not only very out of character for him, but very different from any character I have seen anyone play. I had read some slightly negative reviews of it so I went in with slightly lowered expectations, but I have to say it blew me away and I was almost in tears at some points. Also, Danny Glover played the store owner and while I was not overwhelmed by his performance or anything, I did meet him and he was extremely nice.

Check out these two trailers. The first is the actual trailer, and the second is Michel Gondry’s Sweded version of the trailer.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62CZL9Rhz8Y[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B0dJQ35rDs[/youtube]

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