Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) Movie Script
My name is Laurens Straub
I'm the long-time distributor
of films by Werner Herzog...
...who is sitting next to me
We are watching
"Where the Green Ants Dream",...
...a film made in 1984
The last feature film prior to that
was "Fitzcarraldo"
Werner, why did you pursue this topic?
Maybe I should first mention
that the film is dedicated to my mother...
...who died during that time.
She was the person I was most close to
I grew up
with only my mother and my brothers
This is the prevailing mood
that... shaped this film
These tornados, for example,
were filmed in and around Oklahoma
The cinematographer,
...travelling with people from
the research centre for severe storms...
...and chasing tornados.
This was later taken up by Hollywood
At the time there was a certain mood
and I knew I wanted to include pictures...
...that weren't directly connected
to the plot
Similar tornados exist in Australia,
of course, in the north, in Darwin,...
...in Derby and in other places
Shortly before we started
shooting here in '84,...
...these places
were completely destroyed
This place, Coober Pedy,...
...is south of the geographicaI centre
of Australia
What we see here are...
...huge fields
where people used to dig...
...for opals.
They are ten to 15 metres deep
This is one of the main stars,
Wandjuk Marika
This is an originaI sound
and he is playing it himself,...
...the didgeridoo.
He was really good at it
You can see that nature
has always played a big role here
"Fata Morgana"
probably had some influence on...
...how landscape,
desolate landscape is viewed
was the cinematographer again
But I've ignored the question
of how I came to make this film
I visited Australia a few years
before making this film
I think I was at a festivaI,
and I had read...
...lots of excited newspaper articles
in Australia at that time
A triaI had taken place
that became quite famous
It was the first time
that Australian Aborigines...
...had sued a mine company
It was Nabalco,...
...an Australian-Swiss company,
a consortium...
...that I think was digging for bauxite,
the basic materiaI of aluminium
They had destroyed sacred AboriginaI
places in the desert
The Aborigines lost the case...
...and the judge expressed regret
at the end of the triaI...
...that the existing law at the time...
...forced him to make a judgement
in favour of the Nabalco consortium
That caused
a lot of commotion in Australia
Educated people started to realise...
...that this was a question
regarding their own identity,...
...of how they were dealing
with the Aborigines,...
...and of how they were dealing
with their history
After this case
severaI other cases came to court...
...that were won, in large part,
by Aborigines
I happened to be in Australia
during this time...
...and got interested in this issue
I read all the court records...
...of the Nabalco case
It's a strange situation
because the film...
...starts with such a strange calmness
Usually in Hollywood
you'd start with a big action scene,...
...which develops into a story
It's not very contemporary
in the way it was directed...
...and in how the story is told
I also think it's interesting
that it's structured like a documentary
Would it have been possible
to use this topic for a documentary?
I don't think so. I have to be carefuI.
"Structured like a documentary"
What we have seen so far
are highly stylised images
In the beginning nothing happens
This is the main actor, Bruce Spence,...
...a very tall, very pleasant man,
who I really enjoyed working with
He was a big star in Australia at the time
And with him is Colleen Clifford,
an actress
Almost all actors in that film,
all the leading actors,...
...are Australian actors
And as always,
I cast some of my friends...
...that happened to show up
To me it sounds funny to hear the film
dubbed in German
- The originaI language was English?
- Yes
They only spoke English and that's why
the film seems to have a weird,...
...quality to the translation
when you see it in German
That's Ray Barrett...
...who usually plays bad-tempered
characters in Australian films
This is a strange story about a lost dog
It had nothing to do
with the main plot...
...but sometimes,
I don't know how it happens,...
...sometimes,
stories like that of a lost dog...
...become more important
than the beginning of a normaI film
We should say to the listeners...
...that it's great to hear the English
version, which is included on the DVD
I think you need the kind of cockney
accent that this bad-tempered guy has
Yes. Although here
it's an Australian accent, of course
What I'm interested in is
the repetition of some of the imagery
Here we see
all those construction machines,...
...which I believe I have seen
in some of your other films
- I can't think which ones
- Desolate construction machines...
...and military equipment
in the Algerian desert
- That's in "Fata Morgana"
- Yes, exactly
- The camp could also be in "Stroszek"
- That's right
It's incredible how many of these themes
are repeated and intensified in your work
Let's look at the American Indians
and the Aborigines
What's the difference between them?
Well, in both cases
it's a clash of civilisations
It's a clash of completely different
culturaI concepts
In "Fitzcarraldo" the Indians,
who, strangely enough, help...
...to carry the gigantic ship
across the mountain,...
...have a completely different dream
The Aborigines here
have a different dream as well
For them it's a place
where the green ants dream,...
...that needs to be defended
against explosions and bulldozers
The sky looks
almost like that of Patagonia
They actually speak their own language
The people that we see here,
the Aborigines,...
...came from somewhere
completely different,...
...over two or three thousand kilometres
away from the north of Australia,...
...from a place called Yirrkala
That's near the Gulf of Carpentaria
It's to the east of Darwin
A group of Aborigines with a
functioning community was living there
The Aborigines that you come across
in the Australian outback...
...have lost their sociaI structures
They have huge problems
with alcoholism up in Alice Springs,...
...which is roughly
the geographicaI centre of Australia
When they get
their sociaI benefits on Friday,...
...most of the Aborigines are so drunk
that by nine o'clock in the morning...
...they are unconscious and have
to be collected from the streets
I saw terrible things there
But this group was totally intact
Something like this was hard to find.
It's not easy at all
Contact with this group
had been established a long time ago
We discussed with them
in great detaiI what we were doing,...
...and to what extent
I could invent my own mythology
The Green Ants mythology...
...does have
similarities to AboriginaI mythology,...
...but it has been partly invented by me
How's that?
There are, for example, certain places
where lizards have their dreams
Dreams and dream time
are very complex...
...religious and culturaI
AboriginaI concepts...
...that are hermeticaI
and almost inconceivable to us
These days there are lots
of New Age people hanging around...
...who believe
they can experience that, too
Of course, that's bullshit
This is the first reaI dramatic moment
He almost stood
in the centre of the explosion
These are seismic tests where...
...explosions are carried out
at specific times and in specific places...
...to record the echo
from the earth's interior
This is how you can tell
what the sub-structure consists of
In this case it's uranium
But I don't think this is ever clarified
It's nice to hear their language
You'll hear it in a moment
Basically, this is the conflict
This is, well,...
...the luddite theme, the contradiction
between continuity and daily life,...
...or machines and technology. That's a
theme that comes up a lot in your work
Yes, but here in Australia
it was an open...
...and almost daily conflict
It was nearly part of their daily lives,...
...at least during that time
And things did become hostile
That incident with the bulldozer...
...actually happened in another area
A bulldozer driver just shovelled
the Aborigines away
He really came quite close to them...
...and nearly...
...buried them
I experienced a similar incident...
...in Holland when filming "Nosferatu".
A Caterpillar driver...
...drove into our car,
into the driving seat...
...of a truck which we wanted to use,...
...to get rid of the 10,000 rats
that we were using in the film
I grabbed an iron bar
that was Iying round...
...and started hitting
the Caterpillar vehicle
I scared the driver so much
that he actually stopped
He had already driven his shoveI
through the window...
...and hurt two of our crew
So this is a scene
that I'm very familiar with!
I like the way the Aborigines react
They just dust themselves off
and sit back down again
This is Coober Pedy town.
It's very spread out,
just like a Western town
When we were filming, it was still a
settlement without any administration
There was no police, no administration,
no mayor. Nothing
Only shortly afterwards,
did they get a municipaI authority
There used to be Yugoslavians
and Greeks who were digging there
It was a strange, rough place
On the left you see an important man,
it's...
...the guy who plays Ferguson,
Norman Kaye
He's a very well-known actor in Australia
In a film by PauI Cox,...
...a friend of mine and fellow director,...
...asked me to take on
one of the character roles
Do you remember which film that was?
"Men of Flowers" and another film,
but I can't remember the title
In both films I starred with Norman Kaye
That's how we knew each other
and I knew that he had...
...class, he was...
Miliritbi is the name of the case
against Nabalco, I think
This guy is called something else.
He's Wandjuk Marika,...
...and there's his older brother,
who is called Roy Marika
This is a hilarious scene that shows...
...the clash of cultures,
with the help of that machine
And then the liberals come in.
He is brilliantly cast
We had to invent our own company,
called A.S. Mining,...
...because Nabalco approached us
with their lawyers and threatened me...
...that if I were to use the name Nabalco,
they would sue me immediately
I didn't think it was worth it
It didn't matter whether
it was Nabalco or another company
It was part of the daily news then
At this point, the film develops
a certain kind of tone...
...that I don't really like anymore
There's a kind of righteousness,...
...a sort of moraI know-it-all
Even though I was never involved
with the Green Party,...
...it was part of the politicaI climate
of the time
I think the Green Party,
when were they founded...
...and became, for example,
here in Germany,...
...better known? In the '80's
Since the '80's
they've been in parliament
- Before then it was...
- Chaotic and not well structured
I think that's right, if I'm correct
in what I'm saying, but I don't know
Strangely enough, this righteous tone
seeps through...
...and I can't stand it anymore today
That's the only thing I don't like
about the film now
It's not just about ecologicaI,
but also about mythologicaI issues
Yes, and maybe I should mention
that my politicaI position...
...always differed
from that of the Green Party
I've always said that their main goaI is...
...to hug whales...
...and to protect certain species
of night owls from extinction
They are also interested
in the well-being of lettuce leaves
- This is a...
- Trenchant?
...trenchant way to put it
...and nobody in the Green Party was
concerned about human extinction - ...
...the extinction of peoples,
the extinction of cultures and languages
I always said, "For God's sake,
start looking at humans!"
There were 60 different languages
in Australia when I was there,...
...that were becoming extinct...
...because they are only spoken
by a few people now
When the last person of a tribe dies
and his language dies with him...
...we experience a huge culturaI loss
that's irreparable
It's worse than if a kind of grapevine
snaiI dies because a dam is being built
And that is and always has been my...
...criticism of the green movement...
...that rightfully demands certain things
from our civilisation today
But by doing that it's missing
a big part of the picture
Maybe we should get back to this
AboriginaI guy who appears in court...
...and who is dumb, even though
he speaks his own language
He is called dumb because he is the
last one who still speaks his language...
...and nobody can translate it anymore
I like it that both AboriginaI spokesmen
exude such power
Yes. Both men had great authority
within their group
They also had...
...good controI over the younger men
that you can see here
They always wanted to go
to the liquor store...
...and they demanded that we...
...provide them with a TV on location,
for the evenings,...
...a TV and a video recorder
In the evenings they wanted to
watch Kung Fu movies or porn movies
Otherwise they
wouldn't have come along
Alexander von Humboldt
wouldn't have liked this at all,...
...saying that something
like this is sacrilege!
But that's how it is
and what we see here is one of the...
Oh, here in the middle you can see
my brother, Lucki Stipetic, as...
...an Australian policeman
He appears here
He's very important to me,
my younger brother, who has been...
...doing production, finance
and other things for me for 30 years
He's the most important man in my life.
For once, he appears in a film
I love that moment
Here are the usuaI negotiations
and promises
Today you get a percentage of the profit
That has become the norm today...
...when dealing with land rights
issues with Aborigines
Therefore, some of these communities
are much better off financially now
The basis has improved
In the 20 years
since this film was made...
...noticeable changes have taken place
One should say that
a certain part of the population,...
...intelligent people,
university students,...
...morally active people,
have achieved many good things
How does this differ
from American politics...
...in terms of issues
relating to native reservations?
Well, you can't just talk
about American politics in generaI
At the moment, politics...
...under Bush seems
to be taking us backwards...
...and questions like that
aren't really considered
For them it's important
that somewhere in the arctic...
...new sources of oiI can be found
and forests can be deforested
Questions that concern the native
people, the North American Indians,...
...are being ignored
But in terms of the generaI population
there is a great interest in...
...the native Indians
But this is partly due
to sentimentaI... feelings
Shamanism and New Age thought,
I think it's simply unbearable
America hasn't found a proper way
to deaI with this yet
That's Nick Lathouris,
a Greek-Australian...
...who I liked a lot
Here you get that tone again
that I don't...
I don't like this tone here
It's nicely put together like a Western
But maybe it's only the setting that...
Yes. There used to be a guy who...
...lived in a... water tank,
he had knocked off its metaI legs
This is based on that story
It's a great scene,
but the way it's used here in the film...
- I wouldn't do it again
- I think so, too. Yes
I'd do it in a much more subtle way,...
...or else in a much more bizarre way
Yes
I don't know
It's only that particular tone
that annoys me today
What's being said here is a metaphor
of a train that is speeding...
...towards a collapsed bridge and in...
...this train you can only walk backward
to the last carriage
One can say that the film is full of great
ironic comments about colonisation
The guy playing the missionary
is Tony Llewellyn-Jones
He's a friend of mine who did a lot of
good work in Australian film production
He also helped us...
...to get permission to shoot
That wasn't so easy especially since
Aborigines were involved as well
There were certain rules,
certain approvaI procedures
Of course, you come across those
missionaries everywhere in Australia
I've experienced scenes like that.
It makes you want to run away
This is on the outskirts of Coober Pedy
Some of the mine workers actually...
...dug themselves cave dwellings
into the sand and the rocks
In the background you can see that
some buildings...
They'd normally use cave dwellings
in order to cooI down...
...because it was incredibly hot,
it was over 122 degrees...
...in the shade, sometimes
Oh, yes, that's...
...a guy I'm really fond of...
...who helped out working on the English
script, the screenplay - Bob Ellis
He plays the supermarket manager
That is actually a situation that I...
...experienced in a supermarket
The film is full of these kinds of images
- That's another one you've often used
- Yes
Directly from "Fata Morgana",
I remember that I...
...myself made that crane,
that hook, swing...
...because I knew it would look better.
I don't know why
- That's early in the morning
- Yes
And the music is, I think,
"Requiem" by Faure
Was it quite a logisticaI challenge
to film here?
It wasn't so difficult, actually. We could
accommodate people in Coober Pedy
I was staying outside the town,
near the opaI fields in a...
...little trailer, a little mobile home
Our set designer,
Ulrich Bergfelder, made...
...many things for our accommodation
He was a very important
member of our crew...
...and went on to work on
important projects with me later on
He worked on "Fitzcarraldo",
operas and all kinds of projects
I always liked the way he was able
to make a location habitable
He'd make a moteI that you
wouldn't dare to enter,...
...suitable for accommodation.
He'd install a kitchen and...
Very pleasant
These are questions I always thought
about, mathematicaI stuff
The science of topology
How the universe is constructed
and how it could be distorted
- It's a theme in "Kasper Hauser"
- Yes, exactly
These things come up all the time,
non-euclidean geometry
There is also the famous "Klein bottle"
You have to think of a bottle,
it's three dimensionaI
There is an inside and an outside
But the mathematician Klein
proved that...
...there is an object
that has an inside but no outside
Then there's the question of how
many points you'd need in the universe...
...to be able to get to a stable position
These questions
are studied by cosmologists today
I have been thinking about
these questions for years
I wouldn't include this today
But what was just said was one
of the most popular phrases of the '80's
That's true. But I have to repeat, I
was never part of any popular movement
Elvis mania passed me by
I wasn't interested in the '68 movement.
In fact, I opposed them
I wasn't part of the Green Party
It's still a mystery to me today
This is a very nice scene.
That radio there... was my radio
I had it when we filmed "Fitzcarraldo"
in the jungle and I played loud music on it
During bad times I played
what we'll hear in a second
A very lonely man
I think he often has a toothache.
He feels lonely and...
...has despondent thoughts
He's a very likable character
He reminds me a bit of "Homer Faber"
Maybe, yes.
Now we hear the piece I love so much
It's Argentina during the World Cup
It's when they became world champions
for the first time and...
Here
A great radio announcer.
I've never heard anyone like that
In Argentina and BraziI
you often hear things like that
But he was... the god
of all radio announcers
And I still like listening
to those Argentinean goals,...
...to hear him cheering.
That really cheers me up
That's an insult for... Australian
Aborigines, "bungs"
It's just like the Americans
calling the Vietnamese "gooks"
Or "bimbos". DreadfuI
Another question
I asked myself earlier was,...
...what you would have done,
if you have ever thought about it,...
...if you didn't live
in the 20th or 21 st Century...
...and film didn't exist?
How would you have employed
your talent to explore, with what means?
Yes, that's a good question
I think we just saw something
I might have done
I might have become a mathematician...
...and would have done research on...
non-euclidean spaces
Or else I would have...
I surely would have written
I'm good at that
I don't know, it's difficult to say
An astronomer, maybe a mathematician
He's wearing two watches!
That's Melbourne
We organised everything from there
That scene
that could be from "Stroszek"...
- Yes
- ... as if he is walking through New York
I was living with a friend and colleague,
PauI Cox...
...whose films
I had starred in a few times
There's the weird incident in the lift
that I really like
We need to watch this
Something really weird will happen
The lift stops
How successfuI was the film?
- The originaI was in English?
- Yes
Was it running in other countries?
Definitely in Australia, I presume?
It was shown in Australia and here,
but it wasn't really successfuI anywhere
I always did films
that I thought would be successfuI
The story is simple, easy to understand,
but at the same time profound
- It's also a lively story
- And it's also very humorous
That's a funny bit with the lift
I do believe there
was something speciaI...
...about the way...
...that this film
was received by the audience
I had made "Fitzcarraldo"
prior to this film...
...and before that
a few very difficult films
People were expecting me to break
some kind of endurance record,...
...that this will be
even more spectacular,...
...that I'd make an even bigger movie,
shot in all of Australia
Or that I'd, I don't know,
shoot a film on K2
That was actually
a project that I wanted to do
At the time I spent some time
with Reinhold Messner
Now the lift is stuck again, isn't it?
Now they realise that it
was only their imagination
I love this scene,
it contains some nice moments
What I actually wanted to say is that
I went with Reinhold Messner
and Hans Kammerlan to Karakorum
They had just climbed two mountains in
one go that were over 26,000 feet high
Up one mountain on one route
and then down on a different route
And up the next mountain
and down again using a different route
Nobody had ever done that before
I had made the documentary "The Dark
Glow of the Mountains" with Messner...
...because I wanted to see
if I could make a movie on K2
I had a big story that was strange
and difficult to make
Three days after I got there
and had walked past K2...
...I realised it was impossible,
so I cancelled the project
But word had gotten around
People knew about it and expected me
to shoot a film on top of a mountain
They expected something
quite outrageous
And then it was a pretty simple film
in the Australian desert
People were disappointed about that
Yes, but surely it was shown on TV
in a number of countries?
Yes, of course, and strangely enough,
it's still around today
It's shown regularly in the United States
and other countries
And now you can get DVD versions
I remember I was disappointed as well
when it was first released...
...for the same reasons
that you just mentioned
But a few days ago I saw it with
pleasure because it's very humorous
- And...
- I like watching it as well!
But I have one reservation and I've
mentioned it severaI times already
It's this sort of prevailing tone
that I don't like anymore
It would have been so easy to avoid it,
but it's done and I have to live with it
But it doesn't cause me
any sleepless nights
The interesting thing is that the era
is defined by this prevailing tone...
...because if you look at the pictures,...
...you wouldn't necessarily think
it's an old film
That's true but...
...none of my films represent
an actuaI era
You wouldn't recognise that a film
is from the end of the '60's,...
...or the from the beginning
of the '80's
You can't recognise
a particular fashion style in my films
It's impossible. But in this case,
strangely enough, it is possible
There are severaI moments
where nothing really happens
I like that
Yes, this is the main theme now,
with this green airplane...
...that we saw on the runway
in Melbourne earlier
It impressed them so much.
This was my invention, of course
And here they've created a runway
A big catastrophe
is going to happen with that plane
It's a plane that they really want,
for reasons that are still...
...unknown to us at this moment
But later we find out that this is the
big green ant for them, the winged ant...
...which is flying away across the sky
Yes, that stuck in their mind.
They wanted that plane
We got some construction vehicles
in motion there
It's impressive
When I see this, I think that
the time you spent in Africa,...
...years ago, influenced you greatly
Yes, it probably did.
I started travelling quite young
I was 18 or 19 when I first went to Africa
Funnily enough, it never went smoothly
I either got really sick,
or something else happened
I'd been locked up
and all kinds of other things
What they mention here is actually
a big problem in a lot of communities
There are young people
sniffing glue and other things,...
...like fumes or alcohoI
Unfortunately that's a problem
of many primitive people who...
...have been abruptly
thrown into a civilisation that...
...is thousands of years ahead...
...in its technicaI
and organisationaI development
None of the primitive people
that I know of...
...were able to cope with this
For example, the Eskimos.
I went to Alaska to shoot something...
...and you can see the same thing
Or bushmen in the Kalahari desert
in the south of Africa
Wherever you go,...
...it appears that
the problems are almost identicaI
That means alcoholism, the breakdown
of sociaI structures, criminality
And I don't know what else.
It really is terrible
It's a kind of culturaI unemployment
No, worse than that,
it's a shock you never recover from...
...which causes destruction that...
...I believe is irreparable
There is a possibility that
things will improve a bit in Australia
But a lot of the Aborigines have been...
...culturally sucked into...
...a civilisation
that originated in England
This is an ant expert
Yes, that was one of my big problems
I wanted to have
hundreds of thousands of ants...
...that were all facing one direction,
like filings
We were doing tests for months...
...and tried to cooI the ants down so
that they became practically immobile
But it was impossible,
we couldn't do it
I think this is Ralph Cotterill
I like this actor an awfuI lot
This scene is quite unusuaI
for this film because...
...the camera is usually fixed...
...on a tripod or a crane
Here it's suddenly filmed
with a hand-held camera
It's strange,
in the middle of the film is a...
...centre that is not still,
but full of movement and...
A great digression
They're almost getting ecstatic
I never saw it
as a stylistic inconsistency
It's very strange, that's...
These calm images
are centred around this scene
It's great how the white guys
are getting excited,...
...as opposed to the other people,
who are indifferent.
- And here we have...
- WonderfuI!
...the main star of the film!
- The star of the film
- The airplane
This runway already existed
but we enlarged it
We wouldn't have had enough money
to build a new runway but...
The guy who just got up in his cowboy
hat gets more important from now on
You can see him on the right,
wearing the checked shirt
That's...
...Gary Williams,...
...who was a very important man
during that time...
...in the AboriginaI politicaI movement
I really liked him, he was an...
...intermediary between the
white civilisation and the Aborigines
The plane is handed over.
It's still cheap,...
...for the mining company
In the background you can see
PauI Cox, the photographer
He's a good friend of mine
I wanted him to be in front
of the camera for once
He's a great photographer,
quite apart from the fact...
...that he's also a great director
While I was staying with PauI Cox,...
...I also got to know... Bruce Chatwin
That was almost certainly
during the same time,...
...maybe a few weeks earlier.
PauI Cox is on your right
I was living with him and found out
through a newspaper...
...that Bruce Chatwin
was also in Australia...
...to introduce a new book
I found out who the publisher was...
...and called them, but Chatwin was...
...doing research for his book,
"Songlines", in the Australian outback
I said that I'd like to meet him...
...and left my phone number.
Shortly afterwards I got a call...
...and was told that if I phoned a number
in Port Augusta I'd reach him
I called him and he said,
"Wow, you're the one with the films!"
He always carried a leather bag
with five of six books...
...and one of the books was
"Of Walking In Ice", which I'd written
He was on his way to Sydney and then
back to London and I said to him,...
..."Why don't you come
to Melbourne instead?"
And he came.
I asked him what he looked like
He said, "Like a public schooI boy
"I'm blonde and I'm wearing
a leather rucksack"
And we spent 48 hours...
...talking almost non-stop,
only interrupted by little naps,...
...telling each other stories. He
told about three times as many as me
We got on so well
from the moment we met
And that was important,
because later I shot the film...
..."Cobra Verde",
which is based on a book by him
When he died he gave me
his leather rucksack and said,...
..."You're the one who has to wear it
now, you're the one who's walking
"You are the one
who has to own this rucksack"
I like how he sings
He claims to be a pilot but...
...it turns out he's just a mechanic...
...who only repairs motorbikes
By the way, it was quite difficult
to get the Australian air force...
...to lend us this plane...
...for us to use it for this film
We negotiated for a long time,
but everything worked out in the end
Now we see the big court scene
Yes
I think it's interesting because the film
becomes British all of a sudden
Well, the Australian...
...judiciaI system
is based on the British one
The Queen of England
is still the head of state... in Australia
What did you find so interesting
about this?
Maybe it was because...
...the originaI inspiration for the film
was a reaI court case
Nabalco versus Miliritbi and others
On the left you can see MichaeI Edols,
a director who...
...made beautifuI documentaries
about and with Aborigines
I became friends with him
He started making...
...a film during that time...
...in Nicaragua called,
"Ballad of the Little Soldier"
Denis Reichle,
another great friend of mine...
...was having some problems
with the film
They were stuck
and not making any progress,...
...so he asked me to take over
from MichaeI Edols
And I did
So one film basically led to another
I think I released two films
by MichaeI Edols at the time
Yes
They were very unusuaI
Yes, I like this
The whole topic is quite interesting,
even the arguments themselves
I like it that it's filmed like
a traditionaI court room drama...
...and that it actually works
This expert here, for example,...
...is much more believable
than in Hollywood movies
- How long did this scene take you?
- I think two days
- What? The whole scene?
- Yes, the whole court room scene
We weren't allowed to film there
any longer...
...because reaI trials
actually took place in that court
And we didn't have much money
We had to pay for the extras,
the lighting, and all kinds of other things
It's strange to see them in their suits
It looks really weird
Both of them actually spoke
very good English
Roy Marika on the left spoke
nine languages... fluently
Six or seven Aborigine languages,...
...as well as English
and some Dutch, I think
A lot of the Aborigines grow up
bilinguaI because...
...in traditionaI communities,...
family half that is their mother's side...
...and usually the mother belongs
to a different tribe...
...and speaks a different language
Both of them were fluent
in severaI languages
I like this moment
They are all talking about dream time...
...and he doesn't know
how to turn off his watch!
I like these moments
that are completely bizarre
This was actually
a very important legaI point,...
...the way hearsay is allowed
as evidence in trials like this one
There was a famous case from the
Gold Coast, which is Ghana today
It was Angu versus Attah
It was a ground-breaking triaI...
...that allowed hearsay, for the first time
in English judiciaI history,...
...as evidence
It's a very complex... judiciaI question
Yes, I actually studied that court case
It's very interesting,
he summarises it quite well
That case wasn't about
tribaI customs, it was...
...about who of them was allowed
to live in the governor's palace
- What I like best are the faces
- Yes
I think the atmosphere of a court case
is portrayed well
I think so, too. It's very...
Besides the fact that the question
that's being argued is interesting,...
...you also show an interest
in the art of arguing itself
It's different to the judiciaI system
in the USA, where...
It's dramatic
...the prosecution and the defence
confront each other like in a dueI...
...and whoever is the better performer...
...in front of the jury wins.
It's also about personaI gains and losses
Prosecutors against the defence
- It's totally different
- I like this scene a lot
You really get the feeling that
they are taking the matter seriously
Yes
That's a bit strange now,
it's very legalistic
I really liked this guy,
I don't even remember his name
He was from a tribe
with only 24 speakers left
In this case, we said that
he's the last speaker left
It's MichaeI Edols again
I want to get back to what
we were talking about earlier
I was interested in people
in Australia who were the last,...
...the only, definitely...
...the sole speakers of their language,
the last of their tribe
I had met a man in Port Augusta,...
...in the south of Australia,...
...who was living in a nursing home
He was called "the mute one"
by the nursing home staff
He could say three words
in English, but that was all
Nobody could talk to him
and he couldn't talk to anybody,...
...because nobody
spoke his language anymore
I'm sure he was over 80 years old
and the only thing he...
...was looking for
was some kind of contact
So he always went
to the coke vending machine,...
...throwing in one coin after another,...
...and listened to the sound
of the falling coins
When the coke cans
fell out of the machine,...
...they made a clunking noise
But he didn't pick them up,
so all cans fell on top of one another
He listened to those sounds
like they were some kind of dialogue
During the night the carers
in the nursing home...
...opened the vending machine,
took out all the coins,...
...put the coke cans back and put...
...the coins back into the guy's pocket
without him noticing
This was so that
he could start again the next day
That was so...
That made such an impression on me,
I'll never forget it
I still see him today,
how he was shuffling across the corridor
I've never seen a person looking so lost
And I based this guy in the film on him
And that's...
...the case I'd quote if somebody asked
me what I dislike about the Green Party
During the case, there were
objects shown that were taboo...
...and weren't really recordable
as evidence in Anglo-Saxon law
That's a very similar tone
to the closing words of the judge...
...in the court case,
Nabalco versus Miliritbi
We got some activists together,
they were actually authentic
And you can see...
...how this movement
expressed itself at first
It's probably more pleasant to watch
today than at the time
The guy on the right
is one of the brutes from "Mad Max"
I've forgotten his name
It's possibly Ralph Cotterill,
but I'm not sure anymore
I think that's a beautifuI shot
Yes, this became
the film poster picture...
...because that image reveals
such a contradictory antagonism
It's quite difficult
to translate the broken English...
...of the Aborigines
appropriately into German
I think we managed quite well here.
I haven't heard the film in a while,...
...heard and seen it
I think the dubbing turned out quite well
And with this film it was very...
...delicate and difficult in generaI,
I always knew that
With all your films the originaI language
is a very... important aspect
That's right. But, of course,
we didn't have a choice
We had to dub the film because...
...ZDF sponsored
and co-produced the film
So it has to be... translated
That's Gary Williams
They have beautifuI faces
The film has a very strange ending
It's very strange and totally made up
- It really looks like an insect
- Yes
But only if filmed from a certain angle
So if this film is some kind of lesson,
a learning experience,...
...how did it actually help you to evolve?
Would you say this film brought about
some change in you,...
...which caused you to move on
and do further things?
I think it's wrong to say
this was only a practice run
I've never made a film
as a practice run
This project was as important as...
..."The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" or...
..."Fitzcarraldo", or whatever
There never were any...
...practice runs, or in-between films,...
...or things I just did on the side.
Definitely not
- It's difficult to say
- It's great how "drunk" the plane is
Yes, that was difficult to do...
...and the reaI pilots sitting in the plane
took some risks
It's really difficult to do that
Because the plane is hard to navigate
It's hard to get it to wobble,
like we see here
- To get back to...
- Yes. What did this film mean to me?
After "Fitzcarraldo" I spent about
two years licking my wounds...
...and recovering financially,
physically and in other ways
But there were already
quite a few projects...
...that were in the pipeline
For example, in the same year I shot...
..."The Dark Glow of the Mountains"
in the Karakorum, and in Nicaragua...
..."Ballad of the Little Soldier"
I filmed all these projects
in quick succession
One in Australia,
one in Nicaragua, one in the Karakorum
It happened very quickly...
...that all these other projects followed
My problem was always that...
...I couldn't keep up fast enough
with the films I wanted to do
I still have that same problem
I've just...
I've just finished two films...
...in less than three months.
They were two feature length films
I edited them and did the sound
in less than three months
I'm half finished with another film...
...and I've just published a book of prose
called, "The Conquest of Futility"
And I'm soon to star in a film
Sometimes there's so much happening
that I can't keep up
I think that was the problem at the time.
I can see clearly that...
...I was putting myself
under enormous pressure...
...and I was very relieved
to have finished the film
That topic really moved me...
...and I'm glad I got if off my chest
But that's how it always was with my
films. There was always something...
...that I needed to get off my chest
And it's become a film on a screen or...
...you can get the DVD...
...and put it somewhere in your shelf
Or you can move on
The end reminds me
a bit of "Signs of Life"
Yes, it's very melancholic
There's always a Requiem
And again, it conveys the same kind of...
...mood as when my mother died
That's part of the film, and such images
and the soundtrack are...
...for me...
...a direct translation of,
"my mother is gone"
For example, this is an image...
...that I really like
It makes you feeI left alone, abandoned.
But we've all experienced that
Everyone will experience that
People that have been very important
die and are gone
I used those motorbikes because
I wanted to create this kind of fog
And there's a car that's racing across
the foreground, to the left
That's one of our people.
I think Ulrich Bergfelder drove it and...
...nearly crashed it
That's a dream I had myself
You wouldn't expect a scene like that
in such a film
It's strange how he stops,
but the camera stays fixed on him
It was obvious the plane would crash
because it had hardly any fueI
So the story is being resolved now
It's a pretty bleak ending. The plane
is gone and the drilling goes on
And we are told poems
that we don't understand
In this case, what we just heard
will be clarified
Yes, but I mean for the Aborigines,
with their songs
I've experienced things like that
with Aborigines,...
...which are completely
incomprehensible to us
Very ritualised...
...things that are completely
removed from us
I like silent moments like that
Here it looks good,
but it's only possible... with those faces
It's only possible
with that mysterious background...
...and the incomprehension on our part
We've reached a point
where we don't understand anymore...
...how they think,
how they see things and how...
...they include mythology
in their daily lives
And how their daily life
revolves around it
- That scene looks a bit familiar
- Yes
I never actually thought about it
but the atmosphere is familiar
Do you sometimes think about...
...these images
and what they mean to you?
I can't really answer that in this case
I was deeply fascinated
by these images...
...and I knew they had to be part of it
I can't really explain today,
20 years later...
...what this image means
But it's perfectly in tune
with the rest of the film
It's very blurred and strange,...
...and not really comprehensible
But at the same time,
very reaI and very dreamlike
It's the most amazing thing...
...and I haven't seen
anything like it since
Passarela was the captain
And Kempes, Mario Kempes
They're the ones
who scored the goals in those days
A corner
It's probably not possible to create
a bleaker ending than this!
Maybe that's part of the reason
why this film wasn't more successfuI
No film ends this bleakly and cheerlessly
We've heard from Hollywood
again and again that...
...a film should end full of hope,
with a victory or a happy ending
It's more like
"ashes to ashes and dust to dust"
This time the door doesn't slam shut
This landscape stretched over 50 km
It's unbelievable,
very stylised and strange
Incomprehensible. You can actually see
holes in the foreground
In the middle you can see
a verticaI hole
The people working in the opaI mines...
...just dug those holes and piled up
the soiI and the sand
You can see what has been going
on there for the last 20 years
It's a typicaI last scene,
just like in a Western
I thought we could show a tornado
as the last thing
But then people would say...
...we had reached the letter F...
...and the tornado would have
to be called "Fergie",...
...or something like that
by the meteorologists
And that would have been the end,
but I changed my mind
Yes, it's strange
I have to say, I...
...I've been growing really fond
of this film lately
Yes
I don't have a problem with it anymore
- OK, Laurens, thanks a lot
- Thank you
InternationaI Broadcast Facilities
I'm the long-time distributor
of films by Werner Herzog...
...who is sitting next to me
We are watching
"Where the Green Ants Dream",...
...a film made in 1984
The last feature film prior to that
was "Fitzcarraldo"
Werner, why did you pursue this topic?
Maybe I should first mention
that the film is dedicated to my mother...
...who died during that time.
She was the person I was most close to
I grew up
with only my mother and my brothers
This is the prevailing mood
that... shaped this film
These tornados, for example,
were filmed in and around Oklahoma
The cinematographer,
...travelling with people from
the research centre for severe storms...
...and chasing tornados.
This was later taken up by Hollywood
At the time there was a certain mood
and I knew I wanted to include pictures...
...that weren't directly connected
to the plot
Similar tornados exist in Australia,
of course, in the north, in Darwin,...
...in Derby and in other places
Shortly before we started
shooting here in '84,...
...these places
were completely destroyed
This place, Coober Pedy,...
...is south of the geographicaI centre
of Australia
What we see here are...
...huge fields
where people used to dig...
...for opals.
They are ten to 15 metres deep
This is one of the main stars,
Wandjuk Marika
This is an originaI sound
and he is playing it himself,...
...the didgeridoo.
He was really good at it
You can see that nature
has always played a big role here
"Fata Morgana"
probably had some influence on...
...how landscape,
desolate landscape is viewed
was the cinematographer again
But I've ignored the question
of how I came to make this film
I visited Australia a few years
before making this film
I think I was at a festivaI,
and I had read...
...lots of excited newspaper articles
in Australia at that time
A triaI had taken place
that became quite famous
It was the first time
that Australian Aborigines...
...had sued a mine company
It was Nabalco,...
...an Australian-Swiss company,
a consortium...
...that I think was digging for bauxite,
the basic materiaI of aluminium
They had destroyed sacred AboriginaI
places in the desert
The Aborigines lost the case...
...and the judge expressed regret
at the end of the triaI...
...that the existing law at the time...
...forced him to make a judgement
in favour of the Nabalco consortium
That caused
a lot of commotion in Australia
Educated people started to realise...
...that this was a question
regarding their own identity,...
...of how they were dealing
with the Aborigines,...
...and of how they were dealing
with their history
After this case
severaI other cases came to court...
...that were won, in large part,
by Aborigines
I happened to be in Australia
during this time...
...and got interested in this issue
I read all the court records...
...of the Nabalco case
It's a strange situation
because the film...
...starts with such a strange calmness
Usually in Hollywood
you'd start with a big action scene,...
...which develops into a story
It's not very contemporary
in the way it was directed...
...and in how the story is told
I also think it's interesting
that it's structured like a documentary
Would it have been possible
to use this topic for a documentary?
I don't think so. I have to be carefuI.
"Structured like a documentary"
What we have seen so far
are highly stylised images
In the beginning nothing happens
This is the main actor, Bruce Spence,...
...a very tall, very pleasant man,
who I really enjoyed working with
He was a big star in Australia at the time
And with him is Colleen Clifford,
an actress
Almost all actors in that film,
all the leading actors,...
...are Australian actors
And as always,
I cast some of my friends...
...that happened to show up
To me it sounds funny to hear the film
dubbed in German
- The originaI language was English?
- Yes
They only spoke English and that's why
the film seems to have a weird,...
...quality to the translation
when you see it in German
That's Ray Barrett...
...who usually plays bad-tempered
characters in Australian films
This is a strange story about a lost dog
It had nothing to do
with the main plot...
...but sometimes,
I don't know how it happens,...
...sometimes,
stories like that of a lost dog...
...become more important
than the beginning of a normaI film
We should say to the listeners...
...that it's great to hear the English
version, which is included on the DVD
I think you need the kind of cockney
accent that this bad-tempered guy has
Yes. Although here
it's an Australian accent, of course
What I'm interested in is
the repetition of some of the imagery
Here we see
all those construction machines,...
...which I believe I have seen
in some of your other films
- I can't think which ones
- Desolate construction machines...
...and military equipment
in the Algerian desert
- That's in "Fata Morgana"
- Yes, exactly
- The camp could also be in "Stroszek"
- That's right
It's incredible how many of these themes
are repeated and intensified in your work
Let's look at the American Indians
and the Aborigines
What's the difference between them?
Well, in both cases
it's a clash of civilisations
It's a clash of completely different
culturaI concepts
In "Fitzcarraldo" the Indians,
who, strangely enough, help...
...to carry the gigantic ship
across the mountain,...
...have a completely different dream
The Aborigines here
have a different dream as well
For them it's a place
where the green ants dream,...
...that needs to be defended
against explosions and bulldozers
The sky looks
almost like that of Patagonia
They actually speak their own language
The people that we see here,
the Aborigines,...
...came from somewhere
completely different,...
...over two or three thousand kilometres
away from the north of Australia,...
...from a place called Yirrkala
That's near the Gulf of Carpentaria
It's to the east of Darwin
A group of Aborigines with a
functioning community was living there
The Aborigines that you come across
in the Australian outback...
...have lost their sociaI structures
They have huge problems
with alcoholism up in Alice Springs,...
...which is roughly
the geographicaI centre of Australia
When they get
their sociaI benefits on Friday,...
...most of the Aborigines are so drunk
that by nine o'clock in the morning...
...they are unconscious and have
to be collected from the streets
I saw terrible things there
But this group was totally intact
Something like this was hard to find.
It's not easy at all
Contact with this group
had been established a long time ago
We discussed with them
in great detaiI what we were doing,...
...and to what extent
I could invent my own mythology
The Green Ants mythology...
...does have
similarities to AboriginaI mythology,...
...but it has been partly invented by me
How's that?
There are, for example, certain places
where lizards have their dreams
Dreams and dream time
are very complex...
...religious and culturaI
AboriginaI concepts...
...that are hermeticaI
and almost inconceivable to us
These days there are lots
of New Age people hanging around...
...who believe
they can experience that, too
Of course, that's bullshit
This is the first reaI dramatic moment
He almost stood
in the centre of the explosion
These are seismic tests where...
...explosions are carried out
at specific times and in specific places...
...to record the echo
from the earth's interior
This is how you can tell
what the sub-structure consists of
In this case it's uranium
But I don't think this is ever clarified
It's nice to hear their language
You'll hear it in a moment
Basically, this is the conflict
This is, well,...
...the luddite theme, the contradiction
between continuity and daily life,...
...or machines and technology. That's a
theme that comes up a lot in your work
Yes, but here in Australia
it was an open...
...and almost daily conflict
It was nearly part of their daily lives,...
...at least during that time
And things did become hostile
That incident with the bulldozer...
...actually happened in another area
A bulldozer driver just shovelled
the Aborigines away
He really came quite close to them...
...and nearly...
...buried them
I experienced a similar incident...
...in Holland when filming "Nosferatu".
A Caterpillar driver...
...drove into our car,
into the driving seat...
...of a truck which we wanted to use,...
...to get rid of the 10,000 rats
that we were using in the film
I grabbed an iron bar
that was Iying round...
...and started hitting
the Caterpillar vehicle
I scared the driver so much
that he actually stopped
He had already driven his shoveI
through the window...
...and hurt two of our crew
So this is a scene
that I'm very familiar with!
I like the way the Aborigines react
They just dust themselves off
and sit back down again
This is Coober Pedy town.
It's very spread out,
just like a Western town
When we were filming, it was still a
settlement without any administration
There was no police, no administration,
no mayor. Nothing
Only shortly afterwards,
did they get a municipaI authority
There used to be Yugoslavians
and Greeks who were digging there
It was a strange, rough place
On the left you see an important man,
it's...
...the guy who plays Ferguson,
Norman Kaye
He's a very well-known actor in Australia
In a film by PauI Cox,...
...a friend of mine and fellow director,...
...asked me to take on
one of the character roles
Do you remember which film that was?
"Men of Flowers" and another film,
but I can't remember the title
In both films I starred with Norman Kaye
That's how we knew each other
and I knew that he had...
...class, he was...
Miliritbi is the name of the case
against Nabalco, I think
This guy is called something else.
He's Wandjuk Marika,...
...and there's his older brother,
who is called Roy Marika
This is a hilarious scene that shows...
...the clash of cultures,
with the help of that machine
And then the liberals come in.
He is brilliantly cast
We had to invent our own company,
called A.S. Mining,...
...because Nabalco approached us
with their lawyers and threatened me...
...that if I were to use the name Nabalco,
they would sue me immediately
I didn't think it was worth it
It didn't matter whether
it was Nabalco or another company
It was part of the daily news then
At this point, the film develops
a certain kind of tone...
...that I don't really like anymore
There's a kind of righteousness,...
...a sort of moraI know-it-all
Even though I was never involved
with the Green Party,...
...it was part of the politicaI climate
of the time
I think the Green Party,
when were they founded...
...and became, for example,
here in Germany,...
...better known? In the '80's
Since the '80's
they've been in parliament
- Before then it was...
- Chaotic and not well structured
I think that's right, if I'm correct
in what I'm saying, but I don't know
Strangely enough, this righteous tone
seeps through...
...and I can't stand it anymore today
That's the only thing I don't like
about the film now
It's not just about ecologicaI,
but also about mythologicaI issues
Yes, and maybe I should mention
that my politicaI position...
...always differed
from that of the Green Party
I've always said that their main goaI is...
...to hug whales...
...and to protect certain species
of night owls from extinction
They are also interested
in the well-being of lettuce leaves
- This is a...
- Trenchant?
...trenchant way to put it
...and nobody in the Green Party was
concerned about human extinction - ...
...the extinction of peoples,
the extinction of cultures and languages
I always said, "For God's sake,
start looking at humans!"
There were 60 different languages
in Australia when I was there,...
...that were becoming extinct...
...because they are only spoken
by a few people now
When the last person of a tribe dies
and his language dies with him...
...we experience a huge culturaI loss
that's irreparable
It's worse than if a kind of grapevine
snaiI dies because a dam is being built
And that is and always has been my...
...criticism of the green movement...
...that rightfully demands certain things
from our civilisation today
But by doing that it's missing
a big part of the picture
Maybe we should get back to this
AboriginaI guy who appears in court...
...and who is dumb, even though
he speaks his own language
He is called dumb because he is the
last one who still speaks his language...
...and nobody can translate it anymore
I like it that both AboriginaI spokesmen
exude such power
Yes. Both men had great authority
within their group
They also had...
...good controI over the younger men
that you can see here
They always wanted to go
to the liquor store...
...and they demanded that we...
...provide them with a TV on location,
for the evenings,...
...a TV and a video recorder
In the evenings they wanted to
watch Kung Fu movies or porn movies
Otherwise they
wouldn't have come along
Alexander von Humboldt
wouldn't have liked this at all,...
...saying that something
like this is sacrilege!
But that's how it is
and what we see here is one of the...
Oh, here in the middle you can see
my brother, Lucki Stipetic, as...
...an Australian policeman
He appears here
He's very important to me,
my younger brother, who has been...
...doing production, finance
and other things for me for 30 years
He's the most important man in my life.
For once, he appears in a film
I love that moment
Here are the usuaI negotiations
and promises
Today you get a percentage of the profit
That has become the norm today...
...when dealing with land rights
issues with Aborigines
Therefore, some of these communities
are much better off financially now
The basis has improved
In the 20 years
since this film was made...
...noticeable changes have taken place
One should say that
a certain part of the population,...
...intelligent people,
university students,...
...morally active people,
have achieved many good things
How does this differ
from American politics...
...in terms of issues
relating to native reservations?
Well, you can't just talk
about American politics in generaI
At the moment, politics...
...under Bush seems
to be taking us backwards...
...and questions like that
aren't really considered
For them it's important
that somewhere in the arctic...
...new sources of oiI can be found
and forests can be deforested
Questions that concern the native
people, the North American Indians,...
...are being ignored
But in terms of the generaI population
there is a great interest in...
...the native Indians
But this is partly due
to sentimentaI... feelings
Shamanism and New Age thought,
I think it's simply unbearable
America hasn't found a proper way
to deaI with this yet
That's Nick Lathouris,
a Greek-Australian...
...who I liked a lot
Here you get that tone again
that I don't...
I don't like this tone here
It's nicely put together like a Western
But maybe it's only the setting that...
Yes. There used to be a guy who...
...lived in a... water tank,
he had knocked off its metaI legs
This is based on that story
It's a great scene,
but the way it's used here in the film...
- I wouldn't do it again
- I think so, too. Yes
I'd do it in a much more subtle way,...
...or else in a much more bizarre way
Yes
I don't know
It's only that particular tone
that annoys me today
What's being said here is a metaphor
of a train that is speeding...
...towards a collapsed bridge and in...
...this train you can only walk backward
to the last carriage
One can say that the film is full of great
ironic comments about colonisation
The guy playing the missionary
is Tony Llewellyn-Jones
He's a friend of mine who did a lot of
good work in Australian film production
He also helped us...
...to get permission to shoot
That wasn't so easy especially since
Aborigines were involved as well
There were certain rules,
certain approvaI procedures
Of course, you come across those
missionaries everywhere in Australia
I've experienced scenes like that.
It makes you want to run away
This is on the outskirts of Coober Pedy
Some of the mine workers actually...
...dug themselves cave dwellings
into the sand and the rocks
In the background you can see that
some buildings...
They'd normally use cave dwellings
in order to cooI down...
...because it was incredibly hot,
it was over 122 degrees...
...in the shade, sometimes
Oh, yes, that's...
...a guy I'm really fond of...
...who helped out working on the English
script, the screenplay - Bob Ellis
He plays the supermarket manager
That is actually a situation that I...
...experienced in a supermarket
The film is full of these kinds of images
- That's another one you've often used
- Yes
Directly from "Fata Morgana",
I remember that I...
...myself made that crane,
that hook, swing...
...because I knew it would look better.
I don't know why
- That's early in the morning
- Yes
And the music is, I think,
"Requiem" by Faure
Was it quite a logisticaI challenge
to film here?
It wasn't so difficult, actually. We could
accommodate people in Coober Pedy
I was staying outside the town,
near the opaI fields in a...
...little trailer, a little mobile home
Our set designer,
Ulrich Bergfelder, made...
...many things for our accommodation
He was a very important
member of our crew...
...and went on to work on
important projects with me later on
He worked on "Fitzcarraldo",
operas and all kinds of projects
I always liked the way he was able
to make a location habitable
He'd make a moteI that you
wouldn't dare to enter,...
...suitable for accommodation.
He'd install a kitchen and...
Very pleasant
These are questions I always thought
about, mathematicaI stuff
The science of topology
How the universe is constructed
and how it could be distorted
- It's a theme in "Kasper Hauser"
- Yes, exactly
These things come up all the time,
non-euclidean geometry
There is also the famous "Klein bottle"
You have to think of a bottle,
it's three dimensionaI
There is an inside and an outside
But the mathematician Klein
proved that...
...there is an object
that has an inside but no outside
Then there's the question of how
many points you'd need in the universe...
...to be able to get to a stable position
These questions
are studied by cosmologists today
I have been thinking about
these questions for years
I wouldn't include this today
But what was just said was one
of the most popular phrases of the '80's
That's true. But I have to repeat, I
was never part of any popular movement
Elvis mania passed me by
I wasn't interested in the '68 movement.
In fact, I opposed them
I wasn't part of the Green Party
It's still a mystery to me today
This is a very nice scene.
That radio there... was my radio
I had it when we filmed "Fitzcarraldo"
in the jungle and I played loud music on it
During bad times I played
what we'll hear in a second
A very lonely man
I think he often has a toothache.
He feels lonely and...
...has despondent thoughts
He's a very likable character
He reminds me a bit of "Homer Faber"
Maybe, yes.
Now we hear the piece I love so much
It's Argentina during the World Cup
It's when they became world champions
for the first time and...
Here
A great radio announcer.
I've never heard anyone like that
In Argentina and BraziI
you often hear things like that
But he was... the god
of all radio announcers
And I still like listening
to those Argentinean goals,...
...to hear him cheering.
That really cheers me up
That's an insult for... Australian
Aborigines, "bungs"
It's just like the Americans
calling the Vietnamese "gooks"
Or "bimbos". DreadfuI
Another question
I asked myself earlier was,...
...what you would have done,
if you have ever thought about it,...
...if you didn't live
in the 20th or 21 st Century...
...and film didn't exist?
How would you have employed
your talent to explore, with what means?
Yes, that's a good question
I think we just saw something
I might have done
I might have become a mathematician...
...and would have done research on...
non-euclidean spaces
Or else I would have...
I surely would have written
I'm good at that
I don't know, it's difficult to say
An astronomer, maybe a mathematician
He's wearing two watches!
That's Melbourne
We organised everything from there
That scene
that could be from "Stroszek"...
- Yes
- ... as if he is walking through New York
I was living with a friend and colleague,
PauI Cox...
...whose films
I had starred in a few times
There's the weird incident in the lift
that I really like
We need to watch this
Something really weird will happen
The lift stops
How successfuI was the film?
- The originaI was in English?
- Yes
Was it running in other countries?
Definitely in Australia, I presume?
It was shown in Australia and here,
but it wasn't really successfuI anywhere
I always did films
that I thought would be successfuI
The story is simple, easy to understand,
but at the same time profound
- It's also a lively story
- And it's also very humorous
That's a funny bit with the lift
I do believe there
was something speciaI...
...about the way...
...that this film
was received by the audience
I had made "Fitzcarraldo"
prior to this film...
...and before that
a few very difficult films
People were expecting me to break
some kind of endurance record,...
...that this will be
even more spectacular,...
...that I'd make an even bigger movie,
shot in all of Australia
Or that I'd, I don't know,
shoot a film on K2
That was actually
a project that I wanted to do
At the time I spent some time
with Reinhold Messner
Now the lift is stuck again, isn't it?
Now they realise that it
was only their imagination
I love this scene,
it contains some nice moments
What I actually wanted to say is that
I went with Reinhold Messner
and Hans Kammerlan to Karakorum
They had just climbed two mountains in
one go that were over 26,000 feet high
Up one mountain on one route
and then down on a different route
And up the next mountain
and down again using a different route
Nobody had ever done that before
I had made the documentary "The Dark
Glow of the Mountains" with Messner...
...because I wanted to see
if I could make a movie on K2
I had a big story that was strange
and difficult to make
Three days after I got there
and had walked past K2...
...I realised it was impossible,
so I cancelled the project
But word had gotten around
People knew about it and expected me
to shoot a film on top of a mountain
They expected something
quite outrageous
And then it was a pretty simple film
in the Australian desert
People were disappointed about that
Yes, but surely it was shown on TV
in a number of countries?
Yes, of course, and strangely enough,
it's still around today
It's shown regularly in the United States
and other countries
And now you can get DVD versions
I remember I was disappointed as well
when it was first released...
...for the same reasons
that you just mentioned
But a few days ago I saw it with
pleasure because it's very humorous
- And...
- I like watching it as well!
But I have one reservation and I've
mentioned it severaI times already
It's this sort of prevailing tone
that I don't like anymore
It would have been so easy to avoid it,
but it's done and I have to live with it
But it doesn't cause me
any sleepless nights
The interesting thing is that the era
is defined by this prevailing tone...
...because if you look at the pictures,...
...you wouldn't necessarily think
it's an old film
That's true but...
...none of my films represent
an actuaI era
You wouldn't recognise that a film
is from the end of the '60's,...
...or the from the beginning
of the '80's
You can't recognise
a particular fashion style in my films
It's impossible. But in this case,
strangely enough, it is possible
There are severaI moments
where nothing really happens
I like that
Yes, this is the main theme now,
with this green airplane...
...that we saw on the runway
in Melbourne earlier
It impressed them so much.
This was my invention, of course
And here they've created a runway
A big catastrophe
is going to happen with that plane
It's a plane that they really want,
for reasons that are still...
...unknown to us at this moment
But later we find out that this is the
big green ant for them, the winged ant...
...which is flying away across the sky
Yes, that stuck in their mind.
They wanted that plane
We got some construction vehicles
in motion there
It's impressive
When I see this, I think that
the time you spent in Africa,...
...years ago, influenced you greatly
Yes, it probably did.
I started travelling quite young
I was 18 or 19 when I first went to Africa
Funnily enough, it never went smoothly
I either got really sick,
or something else happened
I'd been locked up
and all kinds of other things
What they mention here is actually
a big problem in a lot of communities
There are young people
sniffing glue and other things,...
...like fumes or alcohoI
Unfortunately that's a problem
of many primitive people who...
...have been abruptly
thrown into a civilisation that...
...is thousands of years ahead...
...in its technicaI
and organisationaI development
None of the primitive people
that I know of...
...were able to cope with this
For example, the Eskimos.
I went to Alaska to shoot something...
...and you can see the same thing
Or bushmen in the Kalahari desert
in the south of Africa
Wherever you go,...
...it appears that
the problems are almost identicaI
That means alcoholism, the breakdown
of sociaI structures, criminality
And I don't know what else.
It really is terrible
It's a kind of culturaI unemployment
No, worse than that,
it's a shock you never recover from...
...which causes destruction that...
...I believe is irreparable
There is a possibility that
things will improve a bit in Australia
But a lot of the Aborigines have been...
...culturally sucked into...
...a civilisation
that originated in England
This is an ant expert
Yes, that was one of my big problems
I wanted to have
hundreds of thousands of ants...
...that were all facing one direction,
like filings
We were doing tests for months...
...and tried to cooI the ants down so
that they became practically immobile
But it was impossible,
we couldn't do it
I think this is Ralph Cotterill
I like this actor an awfuI lot
This scene is quite unusuaI
for this film because...
...the camera is usually fixed...
...on a tripod or a crane
Here it's suddenly filmed
with a hand-held camera
It's strange,
in the middle of the film is a...
...centre that is not still,
but full of movement and...
A great digression
They're almost getting ecstatic
I never saw it
as a stylistic inconsistency
It's very strange, that's...
These calm images
are centred around this scene
It's great how the white guys
are getting excited,...
...as opposed to the other people,
who are indifferent.
- And here we have...
- WonderfuI!
...the main star of the film!
- The star of the film
- The airplane
This runway already existed
but we enlarged it
We wouldn't have had enough money
to build a new runway but...
The guy who just got up in his cowboy
hat gets more important from now on
You can see him on the right,
wearing the checked shirt
That's...
...Gary Williams,...
...who was a very important man
during that time...
...in the AboriginaI politicaI movement
I really liked him, he was an...
...intermediary between the
white civilisation and the Aborigines
The plane is handed over.
It's still cheap,...
...for the mining company
In the background you can see
PauI Cox, the photographer
He's a good friend of mine
I wanted him to be in front
of the camera for once
He's a great photographer,
quite apart from the fact...
...that he's also a great director
While I was staying with PauI Cox,...
...I also got to know... Bruce Chatwin
That was almost certainly
during the same time,...
...maybe a few weeks earlier.
PauI Cox is on your right
I was living with him and found out
through a newspaper...
...that Bruce Chatwin
was also in Australia...
...to introduce a new book
I found out who the publisher was...
...and called them, but Chatwin was...
...doing research for his book,
"Songlines", in the Australian outback
I said that I'd like to meet him...
...and left my phone number.
Shortly afterwards I got a call...
...and was told that if I phoned a number
in Port Augusta I'd reach him
I called him and he said,
"Wow, you're the one with the films!"
He always carried a leather bag
with five of six books...
...and one of the books was
"Of Walking In Ice", which I'd written
He was on his way to Sydney and then
back to London and I said to him,...
..."Why don't you come
to Melbourne instead?"
And he came.
I asked him what he looked like
He said, "Like a public schooI boy
"I'm blonde and I'm wearing
a leather rucksack"
And we spent 48 hours...
...talking almost non-stop,
only interrupted by little naps,...
...telling each other stories. He
told about three times as many as me
We got on so well
from the moment we met
And that was important,
because later I shot the film...
..."Cobra Verde",
which is based on a book by him
When he died he gave me
his leather rucksack and said,...
..."You're the one who has to wear it
now, you're the one who's walking
"You are the one
who has to own this rucksack"
I like how he sings
He claims to be a pilot but...
...it turns out he's just a mechanic...
...who only repairs motorbikes
By the way, it was quite difficult
to get the Australian air force...
...to lend us this plane...
...for us to use it for this film
We negotiated for a long time,
but everything worked out in the end
Now we see the big court scene
Yes
I think it's interesting because the film
becomes British all of a sudden
Well, the Australian...
...judiciaI system
is based on the British one
The Queen of England
is still the head of state... in Australia
What did you find so interesting
about this?
Maybe it was because...
...the originaI inspiration for the film
was a reaI court case
Nabalco versus Miliritbi and others
On the left you can see MichaeI Edols,
a director who...
...made beautifuI documentaries
about and with Aborigines
I became friends with him
He started making...
...a film during that time...
...in Nicaragua called,
"Ballad of the Little Soldier"
Denis Reichle,
another great friend of mine...
...was having some problems
with the film
They were stuck
and not making any progress,...
...so he asked me to take over
from MichaeI Edols
And I did
So one film basically led to another
I think I released two films
by MichaeI Edols at the time
Yes
They were very unusuaI
Yes, I like this
The whole topic is quite interesting,
even the arguments themselves
I like it that it's filmed like
a traditionaI court room drama...
...and that it actually works
This expert here, for example,...
...is much more believable
than in Hollywood movies
- How long did this scene take you?
- I think two days
- What? The whole scene?
- Yes, the whole court room scene
We weren't allowed to film there
any longer...
...because reaI trials
actually took place in that court
And we didn't have much money
We had to pay for the extras,
the lighting, and all kinds of other things
It's strange to see them in their suits
It looks really weird
Both of them actually spoke
very good English
Roy Marika on the left spoke
nine languages... fluently
Six or seven Aborigine languages,...
...as well as English
and some Dutch, I think
A lot of the Aborigines grow up
bilinguaI because...
...in traditionaI communities,...
family half that is their mother's side...
...and usually the mother belongs
to a different tribe...
...and speaks a different language
Both of them were fluent
in severaI languages
I like this moment
They are all talking about dream time...
...and he doesn't know
how to turn off his watch!
I like these moments
that are completely bizarre
This was actually
a very important legaI point,...
...the way hearsay is allowed
as evidence in trials like this one
There was a famous case from the
Gold Coast, which is Ghana today
It was Angu versus Attah
It was a ground-breaking triaI...
...that allowed hearsay, for the first time
in English judiciaI history,...
...as evidence
It's a very complex... judiciaI question
Yes, I actually studied that court case
It's very interesting,
he summarises it quite well
That case wasn't about
tribaI customs, it was...
...about who of them was allowed
to live in the governor's palace
- What I like best are the faces
- Yes
I think the atmosphere of a court case
is portrayed well
I think so, too. It's very...
Besides the fact that the question
that's being argued is interesting,...
...you also show an interest
in the art of arguing itself
It's different to the judiciaI system
in the USA, where...
It's dramatic
...the prosecution and the defence
confront each other like in a dueI...
...and whoever is the better performer...
...in front of the jury wins.
It's also about personaI gains and losses
Prosecutors against the defence
- It's totally different
- I like this scene a lot
You really get the feeling that
they are taking the matter seriously
Yes
That's a bit strange now,
it's very legalistic
I really liked this guy,
I don't even remember his name
He was from a tribe
with only 24 speakers left
In this case, we said that
he's the last speaker left
It's MichaeI Edols again
I want to get back to what
we were talking about earlier
I was interested in people
in Australia who were the last,...
...the only, definitely...
...the sole speakers of their language,
the last of their tribe
I had met a man in Port Augusta,...
...in the south of Australia,...
...who was living in a nursing home
He was called "the mute one"
by the nursing home staff
He could say three words
in English, but that was all
Nobody could talk to him
and he couldn't talk to anybody,...
...because nobody
spoke his language anymore
I'm sure he was over 80 years old
and the only thing he...
...was looking for
was some kind of contact
So he always went
to the coke vending machine,...
...throwing in one coin after another,...
...and listened to the sound
of the falling coins
When the coke cans
fell out of the machine,...
...they made a clunking noise
But he didn't pick them up,
so all cans fell on top of one another
He listened to those sounds
like they were some kind of dialogue
During the night the carers
in the nursing home...
...opened the vending machine,
took out all the coins,...
...put the coke cans back and put...
...the coins back into the guy's pocket
without him noticing
This was so that
he could start again the next day
That was so...
That made such an impression on me,
I'll never forget it
I still see him today,
how he was shuffling across the corridor
I've never seen a person looking so lost
And I based this guy in the film on him
And that's...
...the case I'd quote if somebody asked
me what I dislike about the Green Party
During the case, there were
objects shown that were taboo...
...and weren't really recordable
as evidence in Anglo-Saxon law
That's a very similar tone
to the closing words of the judge...
...in the court case,
Nabalco versus Miliritbi
We got some activists together,
they were actually authentic
And you can see...
...how this movement
expressed itself at first
It's probably more pleasant to watch
today than at the time
The guy on the right
is one of the brutes from "Mad Max"
I've forgotten his name
It's possibly Ralph Cotterill,
but I'm not sure anymore
I think that's a beautifuI shot
Yes, this became
the film poster picture...
...because that image reveals
such a contradictory antagonism
It's quite difficult
to translate the broken English...
...of the Aborigines
appropriately into German
I think we managed quite well here.
I haven't heard the film in a while,...
...heard and seen it
I think the dubbing turned out quite well
And with this film it was very...
...delicate and difficult in generaI,
I always knew that
With all your films the originaI language
is a very... important aspect
That's right. But, of course,
we didn't have a choice
We had to dub the film because...
...ZDF sponsored
and co-produced the film
So it has to be... translated
That's Gary Williams
They have beautifuI faces
The film has a very strange ending
It's very strange and totally made up
- It really looks like an insect
- Yes
But only if filmed from a certain angle
So if this film is some kind of lesson,
a learning experience,...
...how did it actually help you to evolve?
Would you say this film brought about
some change in you,...
...which caused you to move on
and do further things?
I think it's wrong to say
this was only a practice run
I've never made a film
as a practice run
This project was as important as...
..."The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" or...
..."Fitzcarraldo", or whatever
There never were any...
...practice runs, or in-between films,...
...or things I just did on the side.
Definitely not
- It's difficult to say
- It's great how "drunk" the plane is
Yes, that was difficult to do...
...and the reaI pilots sitting in the plane
took some risks
It's really difficult to do that
Because the plane is hard to navigate
It's hard to get it to wobble,
like we see here
- To get back to...
- Yes. What did this film mean to me?
After "Fitzcarraldo" I spent about
two years licking my wounds...
...and recovering financially,
physically and in other ways
But there were already
quite a few projects...
...that were in the pipeline
For example, in the same year I shot...
..."The Dark Glow of the Mountains"
in the Karakorum, and in Nicaragua...
..."Ballad of the Little Soldier"
I filmed all these projects
in quick succession
One in Australia,
one in Nicaragua, one in the Karakorum
It happened very quickly...
...that all these other projects followed
My problem was always that...
...I couldn't keep up fast enough
with the films I wanted to do
I still have that same problem
I've just...
I've just finished two films...
...in less than three months.
They were two feature length films
I edited them and did the sound
in less than three months
I'm half finished with another film...
...and I've just published a book of prose
called, "The Conquest of Futility"
And I'm soon to star in a film
Sometimes there's so much happening
that I can't keep up
I think that was the problem at the time.
I can see clearly that...
...I was putting myself
under enormous pressure...
...and I was very relieved
to have finished the film
That topic really moved me...
...and I'm glad I got if off my chest
But that's how it always was with my
films. There was always something...
...that I needed to get off my chest
And it's become a film on a screen or...
...you can get the DVD...
...and put it somewhere in your shelf
Or you can move on
The end reminds me
a bit of "Signs of Life"
Yes, it's very melancholic
There's always a Requiem
And again, it conveys the same kind of...
...mood as when my mother died
That's part of the film, and such images
and the soundtrack are...
...for me...
...a direct translation of,
"my mother is gone"
For example, this is an image...
...that I really like
It makes you feeI left alone, abandoned.
But we've all experienced that
Everyone will experience that
People that have been very important
die and are gone
I used those motorbikes because
I wanted to create this kind of fog
And there's a car that's racing across
the foreground, to the left
That's one of our people.
I think Ulrich Bergfelder drove it and...
...nearly crashed it
That's a dream I had myself
You wouldn't expect a scene like that
in such a film
It's strange how he stops,
but the camera stays fixed on him
It was obvious the plane would crash
because it had hardly any fueI
So the story is being resolved now
It's a pretty bleak ending. The plane
is gone and the drilling goes on
And we are told poems
that we don't understand
In this case, what we just heard
will be clarified
Yes, but I mean for the Aborigines,
with their songs
I've experienced things like that
with Aborigines,...
...which are completely
incomprehensible to us
Very ritualised...
...things that are completely
removed from us
I like silent moments like that
Here it looks good,
but it's only possible... with those faces
It's only possible
with that mysterious background...
...and the incomprehension on our part
We've reached a point
where we don't understand anymore...
...how they think,
how they see things and how...
...they include mythology
in their daily lives
And how their daily life
revolves around it
- That scene looks a bit familiar
- Yes
I never actually thought about it
but the atmosphere is familiar
Do you sometimes think about...
...these images
and what they mean to you?
I can't really answer that in this case
I was deeply fascinated
by these images...
...and I knew they had to be part of it
I can't really explain today,
20 years later...
...what this image means
But it's perfectly in tune
with the rest of the film
It's very blurred and strange,...
...and not really comprehensible
But at the same time,
very reaI and very dreamlike
It's the most amazing thing...
...and I haven't seen
anything like it since
Passarela was the captain
And Kempes, Mario Kempes
They're the ones
who scored the goals in those days
A corner
It's probably not possible to create
a bleaker ending than this!
Maybe that's part of the reason
why this film wasn't more successfuI
No film ends this bleakly and cheerlessly
We've heard from Hollywood
again and again that...
...a film should end full of hope,
with a victory or a happy ending
It's more like
"ashes to ashes and dust to dust"
This time the door doesn't slam shut
This landscape stretched over 50 km
It's unbelievable,
very stylised and strange
Incomprehensible. You can actually see
holes in the foreground
In the middle you can see
a verticaI hole
The people working in the opaI mines...
...just dug those holes and piled up
the soiI and the sand
You can see what has been going
on there for the last 20 years
It's a typicaI last scene,
just like in a Western
I thought we could show a tornado
as the last thing
But then people would say...
...we had reached the letter F...
...and the tornado would have
to be called "Fergie",...
...or something like that
by the meteorologists
And that would have been the end,
but I changed my mind
Yes, it's strange
I have to say, I...
...I've been growing really fond
of this film lately
Yes
I don't have a problem with it anymore
- OK, Laurens, thanks a lot
- Thank you
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