QUESTION: I think that the debate that you’ve been having, your calls to expand the idea of what documentary can be – if that’s been a debate, it seems to me that you’ve won.
WH: No, come on, it’s not winning or losing. We are not in horse races. No, it is just finding, how shall I say, finding an adequate answer to the massive onslaught on our sense of reality. And I’m speaking of digital effects in cinema and photoshop and virtual realities on the net and video games and reality TV, you can continue on. In the last decade a massive onslaught on our sense of reality and we, as filmmakers, are called upon to redefine our sense of reality. That’s what’s behind it. And cinema verite’s the answer of the ‘60s.
Encounters at the End of the World director Werner Herzog talking to All These Wonderful Things.
6 Responses for "“It’s Not About Winning Or Losing”"
Of course the Oscars are not about winning or loosing!
How for god´s sake can anyone in the whole world think that this is actually about…COMPETITION?
The quote’s taken a bit out of context, don’t you think?
Question: …I think that the debate that you’ve been having, your calls to expand the idea of what documentary can be – if that’s been a debate, it seems to me that you’ve won.
Herzog: No, come on, it’s not winning or losing….
What does this have to do with the Oscars?
You’re right, Chris, thanks!!! I’ll amend. I read over it too quickly.
Still, I’m sure Herzog feels the same way about the Oscars. Awards mean nothing to a man like him; he’s above it all. One of the few true geniuses in cinema.
I love Herzog’s documentaries; he really does make you think about what constitutes a ‘documentary,’ as the movies are as much about his relationship to the subject as about the subject itself.
Herzog is in a class to himself at this point, so I doubt he cares about awards, and he probably already has a couple cases full of them.
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