Werner Herzog Goes to Antarctica, falls off snowmobile

You just can't slow down German director Werner Herzog. If he's not fighting with Klaus Kinski in the jungles of South America, he's getting shot at - and wounded - during TV interviews in Los Angeles. Or he's rescuing Joaquin Phoenix from an overturned car. He's eve been creating a remake of Bad Lieutenant. Now he's managed to crash a snowmobile while making a movie about the Antarctic. Bugger. I've been inside the Antarctic circle two and have never set foot on the land, but Werner's gone and made a movie there. Mind you, he did film at the around the sprawling US base of McMurdo, where Christmas brawling makes the news. The places I've been to are more serene and devoid of people. No Werner wiping out.

I have to agree with him though...

"There is something almost sacred about being there," he said, "something that does not belong to our planet anymore. As if it were science fiction, as if we were confronted with the essence of creation."

His new film is called Encounters at the End of the World - Off the map, things get strange, and its website says:

There is a hidden society at the end of the world. One thousand men and women live together under unbelievably close quarters in Antarctica, risking their lives and sanity in search of cutting-edge science.

Now, for the first time, an outsider has been admitted. In his first documentary since GRIZZLY MAN, Werner Herzog, accompanied only by his camerman, traveled to Antarctica, with rare access to the raw beauty and raw humanity of the ultimate Down Under.

ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, Herzog's latest meditation on nature, explores this land of Fire, Ice and corrosive Solitude.

Official site: Encounters at the End of the World »

LA Times: Werner Herzog explores the Antarctic »

Werner's official website »

Interview with Herzog:

Werner Herzog doesn't consider himself an adventurer. "Adventure belongs to a different age. It died out in the early or mid-19th century, and that was a time where men would meet in pistol duels at dawn and where damsels would faint on a couch," he says.

The Trailer:

And here he is talking about penguin prostitution!

Mad fella.
The BBC's 'Imagine' series recently devoted a show to him called, 'Beyond Reason'.
Should be available to view on the BBC iPlayer.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ccgp3

During the making of 'Aguirre, Wrath of God' Herzog treatened to shoot Kinski.
And he meant it too.