Please join us for the first screening in the Documentary Film Series this Tuesday, March 7 at 17.45 in FFB 05. This week we will be presenting Werner Herzog’s haunting and controversial “Lessons of Darkness.”
This film series is sponsored by the Department of Communications and Design; the Program in Cultures, Civilizations, and Ideas; and the Department of American Studies.
About the Series:
Perhaps no film genre approaches its subject with as much curiosity as does the documentary. Join us this spring for four documentaries of varying styles and subjects. Each screening will open with a brief introduction and an informal discussion will follow. All are welcome!
About the first film:
Lessons of Darkness (Werner Herzog/1992/54 min)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPwmsbbcG6Q
Straddling a line between documentary and science fiction, Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness is an epic visual poem set in the burning oil fields of Kuwait following the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War. An evocation of hell on earth, it is alternately horrific and majestic. Massive towers of flame and billowing black smoke transform the desert into a nightmare-world; Kuwaitis turn shocked, saddened eyes to the camera, without recrimination; fire fighters appear to be involved in bizarre, primeval rituals as they go silently about their seemingly ineffectual work. Herzog’s own hushed, awestruck voice intones the poetic narration, while the soundtrack furnishes an epic, elegiac musical backdrop.