21c and LFS Monthly Film Series presents Les Blank on Werner Herzog: Burden of Dreams
Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 7 & 9pm
Gallery 2
Free and open to the public
Cash bar 6:30-9:30pm
16mm in color, running time: 94 minutes
Burden of Dreams (1982) is a chilling but finely balanced account of what
might ordinarily be considered artistic folly: German filmmaker Werner Herzog's
obsession to complete the painfully plagued jungle shooting of Fitzcarraldo.
Disaster after disaster befalls Herzog's tale of a penniless, opera-mad dreamer
(Klaus Kinski) who risks everything to build a grand opera house in the jungle river
port of Iquitos. Blank's film grows into a fascinating (and highly controversial)
record of an obsessed genius and his battle to finish his project in the face of
plane crashes, torrential rains, attacks by armed, hostile Indians, the loss of
several leading actors, and the eruption of a full-fledged border war around him.
The utmost irony running through Burden of Dreams is that creating the
movie Fitzcarraldo proved just as dubious and perilous an enterprise as
the story on which it was based.
"Remarkable ... one of the most candid, most fascinating portraits ever made
of a motion picture director at work. ...
There's never been anything else like it." —Vincent Canby, The New York
Times
About LFS
21c is proud to partner with the Louisville Film Society in the continuing Monthly
Film Series since August of 2007. LFS is a publicly supported non-profit organization.
Support comes from memberships, event admission, advertisement, contributions, donated
materials, and services. For more information about the LFS, please visit visit
www.louisvillefilm.org.
21c Monthly Film Series is funded by: