Herzog's Jubilee

On September 5, 1942 in Munich, in the family of scientists Dietrich Herzog, a German, and his wife Elisabeth, nee Stipetich, an Austrian with Croatian roots, the second son, Werner, was born. Werner Herzog's life nearly ended just two weeks after his birth. The medical institution in which the newborn Werner was located was bombed by allied aircraft. The baby miraculously survived.

Werner Herzog spent the first 12 years of his life in a remote village that did not know any achievements of civilization. Perhaps precisely because the director's childhood was spent in close contact with nature, animals are present in almost every of his films. Upon returning with his mother to Munich in 1954, Werner entered the prestigious gymnasium founded by King Maximilian II of Bavaria in 1849. In the senior classes of the gymnasium, Werner became interested in cinema. To earn money for his first cinematic experiences, Werner combined his studies with work in the evenings as a welder in a steel mill.

In 1961, Werner Herzog graduated from high school and entered the University of Munich, however, he very quickly became a Fulbright Scholar, thanks to which he studied at the film school of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, USA, for about a year.

In 1962, Werner Herzog made his first 12-minute documentary, Hercules, and a year later founded his own production company, Werner Herzog Filmproduktion. In 1968, Werner Herzog, as a promising young director, received financial assistance from the Kuratorium junger deutscher Film. Thanks to this support, Werner Herzog made his first feature film "Lebenszeichen (Signs of Life)", which was awarded a special prize - the Silver Bear - at the Berlin International Film Festival, as well as a prize of 350,000 German marks from the German Film Academy.

By his 80th birthday, Werner Herzog has 20 self-made full-length feature films in his filmography, as well as a segment for a film almanac. In addition, Werner Herzog has a huge number of documentaries, as well as operas and theater productions. 3 feature films made by Herzog were included in the Golden Thousand, thanks to which he is included in the list of the 100 greatest directors of world cinema, compiled by FilmGourmand.

Cinematographic activity of Werner Herzog was marked by 60 film awards, of which the most prestigious are the Palme d'Or and the Grand Prix of the Jury of the Cannes International Film Festival, the Silver Bear of the Berlin International Film Festival, the award of the German Film Academy, as well as the honorary awards of the European Film Academy, the German Film Academy and the International Film Festival in Locarno (Switzerland).

Today, in honor of the 80th anniversary of the great director, I want to remind the fans of his work the frames from his best films included in the Golden Thousand.