Burden of Dreams

NEW RESTORATION

“CAPTURES THE SPIRIT OF EXTREME FILMMAKING.” – IndieWire

Maureen Gosling & Harrod Blank IN PERSON after the Sunday 7/28 show!

For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career, Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made more perilous by Herzog’s determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of indigenous Peruvians to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded mission of one of cinema’s most fearless directors.

Directed by Les Blank. With Werner Herzog, Jason Robards Jr., Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale, Mick Jagger. In English, Spanish, and German with English subtitles. U.S. 1982. DCP. 95 mins.

Restoration executive produced by Harrod Blank, restoration by Anthony Matt, audio restoration by Nick Bergh, color by Paul Cope, & new subtitles by Maureen Gosling.

“CAPTURES THE SPIRIT OF EXTREME FILMMAKING.”
– IndieWire

“One of the most candid, most fascinating portraits ever made of a director at work.”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“A monument to Herzog’s almost masochistic desire to do the impossible.” 
– Derek Malcolm, The Guardian

“The extraordinary portrait of Werner Herzog trapped in the middle of one of his wildest dreams.”
– Roger Ebert