Werner Herzog Useless

Only a few weeks after his 70th birthday the film director Werner Herzog met in Berlin with the composer and cellist Ernst Reijseger, the voice of Senegal, Mola Sylla, the Dutch jazz pianist Harmen Fraanje, the characteristic male voices of the Voches de Sardinna and the music producer Stefan Winter to perform »Eroberung des Nutzlosen« (»Conquest of the Useless«) with music and soundscapes. On two evenings in October 2012 Werner Herzog read (in German) excerpts from his text, which he has written during the adventurous production of his film »Fitzcarraldo«, that would become his most famous movie. Reijseger and his ensemble provided the musical accompaniment, and this double CD is a document of the occasion.

Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of our time, and Fitzcarraldo is one of his most honored and admired films. More than just Herzog's journal of the making of the monumental, problematical motion picture, which involved, among other things, major cast changes and reshoots, and the hauling (without the use of special effects) of a 360-ton steamship over a mountain, Conquest of the Useless is a work of art unto itself, an Amazonian fever dream that emerged from the delirium of the jungle.