Ferocious Reality

Documentary according to Werner Herzog

By: Eric Ames

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Paperback | 17 October 2012

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354 Pages

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22.8 x 15.2 x 2.7

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Over the course of his career Werner Herzog, known for such visionary masterpieces as Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), has directed almost sixty films, roughly half of which are documentaries. And yet, in a statement delivered during a public appearance in 1999, the filmmaker declared: "There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization." Ferocious Reality is the first book to ask how this conviction, so hostile to the traditional tenets of documentary, can inform the work of one of the world's most provocative documentarians.

Herzog, whose Cave of Forgotten Dreams was perhaps the most celebrated documentary of 2010, may be the most influential filmmaker missing from major studies and histories of documentary. Examining such notable films as Lessons of Darkness (1992) and Grizzly Man (2005), Eric Ames shows how Herzog dismisses documentary as a mode of filmmaking in order to creatively intervene and participate in it. In close, contextualized analysis of more than twenty-five films spanning Herzog's career, Ames makes a case for exploring documentary films in terms of performance and explains what it means to do so. Thus his book expands the field of cinema studies even as it offers an invaluable new perspective on a little studied but integral part of Werner Herzog's extraordinary oeuvre.

Industry Reviews

"Ferocious Reality is excellent. The book centers on how Herzog consistently undertakes an exploration of the limits of documentary cinema and engages with it as performative behavior, challenging its boundaries. Eric Ames analyzes a broad range of Herzog's films and engages with an array of important theoreticians of documentary cinema. This book is first-rate and innovative." --Brad Prager, author of The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth

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Non-Fiction Arts & Entertainment Art Forms Non-Graphic Art Forms Digital, Video & New Media Arts Film, TV & Radio Specific Films Film Theory & Criticism Documentary Films Dance & Other Performing Arts

Acknowledgments	p. vii
The Minnesota Declaration	p. ix
Introduction: Werner Herzog, Documentary Outsider Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe	p. 1
Sensational Bodies	p. 17
Game in the Sand
Handicapped Future
Land of Silence and Darkness
Wodaabe
Moving Landscapes	p. 49
The Dark Glow of the Mountains
Fata Morgana
La Soufrière
Lessons of Darkness
Wheel of Time
Ecstatic Journeys	p. 81
Huie's Sermon
Bells from the Deep
Pilgrimage
Baroque Visions	p. 105
The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner
Death for Five Voices
God and the Burdened
Cultural Politics	p. 147
Fitzcarraldo
Ballad of the Little Soldier
Ten Thousand Years Older
The White Diamond
Reenactments	p. 181
Little Dieter Needs to Fly
Wings of Hope
Rescue Dawn
Autobiographical Acts	p. 215
I Am My Films
Portrait Werner Herzog
My Best Fiend
Grizzly Man
Conclusion: Herzog's Verité	p. 259
Encounters at the End of the World
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Notes	p. 269
Index	p. 321
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Ferocious Reality

Documentary according to Werner Herzog

At a Glance

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Industry Reviews

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