Fata Morgana
Werner Herzog
1971 | 90 min | Colour | Digital

“Every shot has a double edge of harsh reality and surrealist fantasy, as when the landing of a jet plane, repeated nine or ten times, becomes an odd spiritual symbol, at once banal and mysterious…For me, it’s Herzog’s most interesting film.” – Dave Kehr

“A haunting, sardonic exploration of Africa as it was “in the beginning,” and as it becomes glutted with the wastes of technological civilization. Amos Vogel writes of the film: “Marvelous, sensual, 360-degree travelling shots of animal cadavers, barbed wire, industrial wastes, decaying trucks, sudden oil wells, ominous surrealist tableaux – all embedded in tragically alienated landscapes of sand and disassociated natives – create an obsessional, hypnotic statement whose anti-technological, anti-totalitarian, cruelly anti-sentimental humanism is subtle, overpowering, and inexplicable to shallow Left and know-nothing Right.”” – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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Part of our season on Werner Herzog