Werner Herzog has published his diaries that he wrote during the filming of Fitzcarraldo, Conquest of the Useless. For those of you who have seen Burden of Dreams, you understand that this is probably some freaky shit definitely worth reading. If you haven’t seen Burden of Dreams but you have seen Fitzcarraldo, you’ll find this history of the filmmaking process nothing short of astonishing. And if you are unfamiliar with all of it, well, I’d start with the movies.

I haven’t read the book yet, but from a new interview with Herzog over at Art Beat by Jeffrey Brown, Herzog admits that even he couldn’t go back to those diaries for many years. An excerpt from the prologue:

“A vision had seized hold of me, like the demented fury of a hound that has sunk its teeth into the leg of a deer carcass and is shaking and tugging at the downed game so frantically that the hunter gives up trying to calm him. It was the vision of a large steamship scaling a hill under its own steam, working its way up a steep slope in the jungle, while above this natural landscape, which shatters the weak and the strong with equal ferocity, soars the voice of Caruso, silencing all the pain and all the voices of the primeval forest and drowning out all birdsong. To be more precise: bird cries, for in this setting, left unfinished and abandoned by God in wrath, the birds do not sing; they shriek in pain, and confused trees tangle with one another like battling Titans, from horizon to horizon, in a steaming creation still being formed. Fog-panting and exhausted they stand in this unreal world, in unreal misery– and I, like a stanza in a poem written in an unknown foreign tongue, am shaken to the core.” Listen/read the interview >>

The interview doesn’t focus on the book specifically, but that’s ok since we all just want more Herzog!

[youtube]IkgCXCwdN_s[/youtube]

I’m heading up to HotDocs this weekend to celebrate with Ron Mann, whose work is featured in this year’s Focus On program of a mid-career filmmaker. The retrospective was curated by filmmaker Astra Taylor, whose Examined Life recently made the festival circuit and a wonderful screening in Austin as part of AFS’s Doc Tour. I’m very excited to see Ron and Astra, and hopefully get to see a bit of their Toronto.

I’ll also be moderating a panel on Monday, Creativity in Doc Making at 1 PM on Monday, May 4. Panelists include Jennifer Baichwal, Act of God (Canada), Laura Bari, Antoine (Canada), Peter Liechti, The Sound of Insects: Record of a Mummy (Switzerland) and Menna Laura Meijer, Sweety, The Friends, Betrayal and Murder of Maja Bradaric (Netherlands). I’m excited to watch their films and to think about creativity in doc making. It’s a subject that tends to get overlooked by people who are getting into documentary. They watch a lot of nonfiction television and think that a doc has to follow a certain form while in reality, the best docs push the boundaries of the form. Please stop by if you can!