PETER ZEITLINGER AND WERNER HERZOG WITH THE CINEMATOGRAPHER – DIRECTOR DUO AWARD AT EnergaCAMERIMAGE 2023!

Thursday August 24th, 2023

It is our great pleasure to announce that this year the special award for the cinematographer-director duo will be received by cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger and director Werner Herzog. Both creators will personally receive the award during the 31st edition of the EnergaCAMERIMAGE, meeting with the festival audience in Toruń and presenting a retrospective review of their films, including both feature and documentary productions.

Born in Prague, Peter Zeitlinger is an experienced cinematographer who honed his skills at the Vienna Conservatory, over the years earning recognition from critics and independent film lovers. Peter Zeitlinger’s versatile repertoire reaches from a one man show in arthouse cinema to thriller and SciFi like Future World by James Franco. Before he began his long-standing collaboration with Werner Herzog, he worked with Ulrich Seidl, for whom he shot the documentary Losses to be Expected (1993). It was his work on this film that caught Werner Herzog's attention and resulted in an invitation in 1995 to collaborate on the documentary Death for Five Voices. In his filmography, Peter Zeitlinger has dozens of feature and documentary films, both long and short format, including Abel Ferrara’s Tommaso (2019) or the Italian drama The Angel in the Wall (2022, dir. Lorenzo Bianchini), which competed for the Golden Frog in the Main Competition of the 30^th EnergaCAMERIMAGE in Toruń. Alongside his work on film sets, he also works as a lecturer, teaching at the HFF Munich Film School.

Werner Herzog and Peter Zeitlinger
(Photo: Courtesy of Peter Zeitlinger)

Werner Herzog, on the other hand, is a renowned German film Pittsburgdirector, screenwriter, producer, actor, and poet, considered a pioneer of New German Cinema, working in both feature and documentary cinema. He made his first short film Herakles at the age of 19. His full-length debut Signs of Life came in 1968, instantly earning critical acclaim. In his professional portfolio he has more than 60 features and documentaries, all of which he produced, wrote, and directed. His films have been shown and awarded at the most important film festivals around the world, including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno, and Sundance. Werner Herzog is also a writer; throughout his creative career, he writes poetry and keeps diaries. In 2021, he published his debut novel "The Twilight World".

Peter Zeitlinger and Werner Herzog, in nearly 30 years of fruitful cinematic collaboration, have created several joint projects, including six features. Alongside their first joint venture, Death for Five Voices (1995), their productions include the documentaries Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), My Best Fiend (1999), Wheel of Time (2003), Grizzly Man (2005), Encounters at the End of the World (2007), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), Into the Abyss (2011), From One Second to the Next (2013), Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016), Into the Inferno (2016), Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds (2020), Theatre of Thought (2022), and the feature films Invincible (2001), Rescue Dawn (2006), Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009), My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (2009), Queen of the Desert (2015), and Salt and Fire (2016).

Peter Zeitlinger on a set of Grizzly Man  
(Photo: Courtesy of Peter Zeitlinger) 

Their joint project Encounters at the End of the World was nominated for an Oscar® in the category of Best Documentary, Feature. This fascinating story about the people living in Antarctica and the unique nature of their work, in Herzog's typical style, tells of their passion and hopes while showing the fleeting beauty of the remote continent. Following the transgressiveness of Herzog's characters and his directorial style, creating unique narratives whose main aim is to illustrate the internal states of the characters, Peter Zeitlinger also pushes his artistic boundaries. Believing in the power of image to reach the senses of the viewer with its message, Zeitlinger abandons stereotypical visual habits and reaches into the world of archetypes. His exceptional meticulousness and unique camera direction significantly contributed to raising the overall quality of the production, and subsequently to its box office and artistic success, supported by a series of awards.

The documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), on the other hand, is the pioneering film in which the Zeitlinger-Herzog duo takes us to the Chauvet Cave in France. On the walls of this cave, discovered only in 1994, the oldest figurative cave paintings were found, dating back 32,000 years, which completely changed our understanding of the origins of Homo sapiens civilization. In his reflective narration, Herzog poses questions about the nature of early men, their relationship with the natural world, and their way of seeing and interpreting reality. In this philosophical tale, he makes the viewer aware of the whole universe of meanings hidden in these paintings. The film, made in 3D technique, shows the cave in all its glory, not only in terms of size, but above all through the prism of the vast interpretative mystery that lies behind the paintings, whose purpose we can still only guess. The use of three-dimensional technology was a conscious choice by the Zeitlinger-Herzog duo, aimed at fully presenting the lofty beauty of the cave closed to most people and requiring special arrangements. To avoid contact with the ground, the crew filmed with the use of special platforms. Werner Herzog and Peter Zeitlinger designed dedicated adapters for 3D cameras for this purpose. All these efforts resulted in a remarkable film that not only illustrates the significance of this archaeological discovery but also tells the contemporary audience about the earliest history through the most modern image techniques, connecting the past with the present and the future in the person of the creators.

Werner Herzog and Peter Zeitlinger on a set of Cave of Forgotten Dreams
(Photo: Courtesy of Visit Films)

In addition to documentary productions, the Zeitlinger-Herzog duo also successfully creates feature films. The flagship example of their unique style and the exceptional nature of their professional relationship is Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, filmed in 2009, starring Nicolas Cage. This particular pastiche of crime cinema, telling the story of a corrupt police officer addicted to drugs, sets a certain mood. The plot of the investigation led by the lieutenant is not a necessary condition for the film to rivet the audience. For Herzog, the plot seems to play a secondary role here; it is entirely subordinate to the aesthetic layer of the film, and the action itself ironically becomes the background for its dreamlike climate. Peter Zeitlinger's cinematography paints a raw image of New Orleans destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, where it is futile to search for its former energy and joy of life. This gloomy place is perfectly suited for the shady dealings of the main character, and his drug-induced visions depicted from the snake perspective of an iguana or alligator are a characteristic feature in the jointly developed visual style of Zeitlinger and Herzog. The duo constantly plays with the viewer, placing the formal accent of the film above its content, thus provoking the audience to step beyond the standardized frames of the classic noir crime genre, which by no means exhausts the genre complexity of Bad Lieutenant.

Eva Mendes and Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant
(Courtesy of Monolith Films)

 Peter Zeitlinger and Werner Herzog are undoubtedly an extraordinary duo of film creators and specialists in art house cinema. They will visit Toruń in November during the 31^st EnergaCAMERIMAGE, and meet with the festival audience. It is impossible to capture the uniqueness of their collaboration in a few short paragraphs. Therefore, we cordially invite you to personally participate in EnergaCAMERIMAGE and hear what the masters have to say on this subject. So far at the festival, we had the opportunity to present one of their joint projects. It was The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which competed in the first-ever CAMERIMAGE 3D Films Competition, alongside productions like Gravity, Avatar, The Great Gatsby, and Pina. The accompanying presentation of their joint film achievements will be an excellent complement to the meeting with the creators and a chance for a deeper understanding of the uniqueness of this cinematographer-director team.