Herzog on Herzog

There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]

Television creates loneliness. This is why sitcoms have added laughter tracks which try to cheat you out of your solitude. Television is a reflection of the world in which we live, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It kills spontaneous imagination and destroys our ability to entertain ourselves, painfully erasing our patience and sensitivity to significant detail.

the notion of civilisation as a thin layer of ice resting upon a deep ocean of darkness and chaos,

An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn’t know why they choose him and he’s usually too busy to wonder why.” William Faulkner

In ancient Greek the word “chaos” means “gaping void” or “yawning emptiness.” The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema.

Even back in 1968, the first time I was at the Berlin Film Festival with one of my films, I found it ossified and suffocating. I felt the festival should be opened up to everyone and screen work in other cinemas around the city, so I took the initiative, got hold of some prints by young filmmakers and rented a cinema for a few days in Neukölln, a working-class suburb of Berlin, which at the time was populated largely by immigrants and students. The free screenings at this parallel venue were a big success and generated intense discussions between audiences and filmmakers, which were exciting to witness. The whole thing was my rebellious moment against the Establishment, which I saw as being unnecessarily exclusive. I told the festival organisers they needed to have more free screenings and open the festival up to the wider public, which shortly afterwards they did.

During the Second World War, Goebbels gave an order to all cameramen at the front: “The German soldier always attacks from left to right.” That was it, no further explanation. Sure enough, if you look at old newsreels, the Germans always advance from the left to the right of the screen.

Today I look at Munich and see a city empty of all significance, invaded by Prussians and stripped of its Bavarian spirit.

Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of the mind.

Who said anything about watching films? I tell the Rogues to read, read, read, read, read. Those who read own the world; those who immerse themselves in the Internet or watch too much television lose it. If you don’t read, you will never be a filmmaker. Our civilisation is suffering profound wounds because of the wholesale abandonment of reading by contemporary society.

It’s possible to learn to play an instrument as an adult, but the intuitive qualities needed won’t be there; the body needs to be conditioned from an early age. The same could be never said for filmmaking. A musician is made in childhood, but a filmmaker any time.

Reactions to Even Dwarfs Started Small seem to depend on people’s feelings about their inner dwarf.

We will be blamed for having not thrown hand grenades into television stations and laying waste to their institutionalised cowardice, for not taking up arms and occupying such debased places which venerate that single, pernicious god: the Einschaltquote, the ratings.

Unlike most people, I didn’t have the privilege to choose my profession. I didn’t even ask myself whether I could do it, I just pushed on with things.

When it comes to the kind of filmmaking I do, the free market is a harsher but more vibrant structure to function within. It’s where the real battle is fought. If you can leave the respirator and submit yourself to the roughness of the market, you should.