La Soufrière 1977 (30 mins) Ages 12+
Werner Herzog has stated that the genesis of this short documentary emerged when he heard reports of an imminent volcanic eruption on the island of Guadeloupe and the refusal of one of the island's residents to evacuate. Herzog and his crew trek across the island, studying the abandoned houses and the animals left behind, before boldly climbing up to the mouth of the volcano. La Soufrière is one of the filmmaker's most nail-biting studies of the power of nature and the relationship humanity holds with its immense force.
Lessons of Darkness 1992 (50 mins) Ages 12+
A visual document of the Kuwaiti oil fields ablaze in the aftermath of the Gulf War, Lessons of Darkness presents a dark vision of a hellish landscape. Wrought by war and calamity, Herzog shows a world filled with unfathomable destruction. The tenor of the film is such that is was initially accused of aestheticising the horrors of war but Herzog's intent is not so simple. He desires to bring scope and weight to these images in a way that the inherent cinematographic limitations of television journalism never could. In doing so, he has crafted a mesmerising quasi companion piece to his earlier Fata Morgana 1971, another totemic visual poem that utilises landscapes as its narrative language. Herzog's spare narration offers only distant, almost alien, insights; there is no simple political rumination to bring meaning to these images, that would suggest too much order in these events.
Lessons of Darkness will screen from an archival 35mm film print.
1.00PM Sat 1 Jul 2017 (1hr 20mins)
GOMA | Cinema A | Free
Find out more about 'The Wrath and the Reveries of Werner Herzog' - http://bit.ly/2pW76ap
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