‘The choice of Richard Mosse: Lessons of Darkness - Werner Herzog’

This program was conceived in collaboration with the photographer and artist Richard Mosse. He was asked the following question: what films and filmmakers have spoken to you the most and inspired you in their aesthetic and narrative choices, when making Broken Spectre, presented in the exhibition Our Impact on Ecosystems? 'Lessons of Darkness' by German director Werner Herzog combined with short movie Mãri hi – The Tree of Dream by Morzaniel Ɨramari was his answer.

Shortly after the Gulf War, oil fires were raging all through Kuwait. In the week before this sea of fire would be extinguished, Werner Herzog filmed this apocalyptic landscape with its murky skies, scorched earth and capricious flames. Ironically, he describes this burning Kuwait as "a new landscape, a national park for the future”. Because the documentary does not contain a single image in which we can recognize our planet, he defines his work as a poetical science-fiction film.

Werner Herzog was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria and studied History and German Literature in Munich and Pittsburgh. He made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature- and documentary films, such as Aguirre der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, 1972), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Grizzly Man (2005). Werner Herzog has published more than a dozen books of prose, and directed as many operas. He now lives in Munich and Los Angeles.