A pilgrimage is a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person's beliefs and faith, although sometimes it can be a metaphorical journey in to someone's own beliefs. Many religions attach spiritual importance to particular places: the place of birth or death of founders or saints, or to the place of their "calling" or spiritual awakening, or of their connection (visual or verbal) with the divine, or to locations where miracles were performed or witnessed, or locations where a deity is said to live or be "housed," or any site that is seen to have special spiritual powers. Such sites may be commemorated with shrines or temples that devotees are encouraged to visit for their own spiritual benefit: to be healed or have questions answered or to achieve some other spiritual benefit. A person who makes such a journey is called a pilgrim. In America, the term pilgrim is typically associated with an early colonial Protestant sect known for their strict rules of discipline.

The Holy Land acts as a focal point for the pilgrimages of the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According to a Stockholm University study in 2011, these pilgrims visit the Holy Land to touch and see physical manifestations of their faith, confirm their beliefs in the holy context with collective excitation, and connect personally to the Holy Land.^[1]

In the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, the visitation of certain ancient cult-centers was repressed in the 7th century BCE, when worship was restricted to the YHWH at the Temple in Jerusalem. In Syria, the shrine of Astarte at the headwater spring of the river Adonis survived until it was destroyed by order of Emperor Constantine in the 4th century.^{[citation needed]}

In mainland Greece, a stream of individuals made their way to Delphi or the oracle of Zeus at Dodona, and once every four years, at the period of the Olympic games, the temple of Zeus at Olympia formed the goal of swarms of pilgrims from every part of the Hellenic world. When Alexander the Great reached Egypt, he put his whole vast enterprise on hold, while he made his way with a small band deep into the Libyan desert, to consult the oracle of Ammun. During the imperium of his Ptolemaic heirs, the shrine of Isis at Philae received many votive inscriptions from Greeks on behalf of their kindred far away at home.

As a common human experience, pilgrimage has been proposed as a Jungian archetype by Wallace Clift and Jean Dalby Clift.^[2]

Pilgrimage centers[link]

Antiquity[link]

Many ancient religions had sacred sites, temples, oracles and sacred groves to which pilgrimages were made.

Bahá'í Faith[link]

Bahá'u'lláh decreed pilgrimage to two places in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas: the House of Bahá'u'lláh in Baghdad, Iraq, and the House of the Báb in Shiraz, Iran. Later, `Abdu'l-Bahá designated the Shrine of Bahá'u'lláh at Bahji, Israel as a site of pilgrimage.^[3]

Bahá'í pilgrimage consists of visiting the holy places in Haifa, Acre, and Bahjí at the Bahá'í World Centre in northwest Israel, and Bahá'ís can apply to join an organized nine-day pilgrimage where they are taken to visit the various holy sites, or attend a shorter three-day pilgrimage.^[3]

Buddhism[link]

Ancient excavated Buddha-image at the Mahaparinirvana Temple, Kushinagar.

Tibetans on a pilgrimage to Lhasa, doing full-body prostrations, often for the entire length of the journey.

There are four places that Buddhists make pilgrimage to:

• Lumbini: Buddha's birth place (in Nepal)
• Bodh Gaya: place of Enlightenment
• Sarnath: where he delivered his first teaching
• Kusinara: (now Kusinagar, India) where he attained mahaparinirvana (died).

Other pilgrimage places in India and Nepal connected to the life of Gautama Buddha are: Savatthi, Pataliputta, Nalanda, Gaya, Vesali, Sankasia, Kapilavastu, Kosambi, Rajagaha, Varanasi.

Other famous places for Buddhist pilgrimage include:

• India: Sanchi, Ellora, Ajanta.
• Thailand: Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, Wat Phra Kaew, Wat Doi Suthep.
• Tibet: Lhasa (traditional home of the Dalai Lama), Mount Kailash, Lake Nam-tso.
• Cambodia: Angkor Wat, Silver Pagoda.
• Sri Lanka: Polonnaruwa, Temple of the Tooth (Kandy), Anuradhapura.
• Laos: Luang Prabang.
• Myanmar: Bagan, Sagaing Hill.
• Nepal: Bodhnath, Swayambhunath.
• Indonesia: Borobudur.
• China: Yung-kang, Lung-men caves. The Four Sacred Mountains
• Japan: Kansai Kannon Pilgrimage, Chūgoku 33 Kannon Pilgrimage, Shikoku Pilgrimage, Mount Kōya.

Christianity[link]

Orthodox pilgrim in Kiev Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine.

Christian pilgrimage was first made to sites connected with the birth, life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Surviving descriptions of Christian pilgrimages to the Holy Land date from the 4th century, when pilgrimage was encouraged by church fathers like Saint Jerome and established by Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. Pilgrimages also began to be made to Rome and other sites associated with the Apostles, saints and Christian martyrs, as well as to places where there have been apparitions of the Virgin Mary. A popular pilgrimage site in the past and today is Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia, Spain, in reference to the Apostle St. James, The Great.

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales recounts the tales told by pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket

Hinduism[link]

Bathing ghat on the Ganges during Kumbh Mela, Haridwar

Pilgrimage to Kedarnath

According to Karel Werner's Popular Dictionary of Hinduism, "[m]ost Hindu places of pilgrimage are associated with legendary events from the lives of various gods.... Almost any place can become a focus for pilgrimage, but in most cases they are sacred cities, rivers, lakes, and mountains."^[4] Hindus are encouraged to undertake pilgrimages during their lifetime, though this practice is not considered absolutely mandatory.^[5] Most Hindus visit sites within their region or locale.

Kumbh Mela: Kumbh Mela is the largest pilgrimage recorded in history.^{[6][7][8][citation needed]} Kumbh Mela is also credited with the largest gathering of humans in the entire world. The location is rotated among Allahabad, Haridwar, Nashik, and Ujjain.

Char Dham (Famous Four Pilgrimage sites): The four holy sites Puri, Rameswaram, Dwarka, and Badrinath (or alternatively the Himalayan towns of Badrinath, Kedarnath, Gangotri, and Yamunotri) compose the Char Dham (four abodes) pilgrimage circuit.

Old Holy cities as per Puranic Texts: Varanasi formerly known as Kashi, Allahabad formerly known as Prayag, Haridwar-Rishikesh, Mathura-Vrindavan, and Ayodhya.

Major Temple cities: Puri, which hosts a major Vaishnava Jagannath temple and Rath Yatra celebration; Katra, home to the Vaishno Devi temple; Three comparatively recent temples of fame and huge pilgrimage are Shirdi, home to Sai Baba of Shirdi, Tirumala - Tirupati, home to the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple; and Sabarimala,where Swami Ayyappan is worshipped.

Shakti Peethas: Another important set of pilgrimages are the Shakti Peethas, where the Mother Goddess is worshipped, the two principal ones being Kalighat and Kamakhya.

Following is a comprehensive list of Pilgrimage sites:

The last four sites in the list together comprise the Chardham, or four holy pilgrimage destinations. It was traditionally believed that one who undertakes a pilgrimage to all four sites will attain moksha, the release from samsara (cycle of rebirths), at the time of death. The holy places of pilgrimage for the Shaktism sect of Hinduism are the Shakti peethas (Temples of Shakti).

Islam[link]

Muslim Pilgrims circumambulating the Kaaba during the Hajj

Supplicating Pilgrim at Masjid Al-Haram, Mecca, Saudi Arabia

The pilgrimage to Mecca (the Hajj) is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. It should be attempted at least once in the lifetime of all able-bodied Muslims who can afford to do so.^[9] It is the most important of all Muslim pilgrimages, and is the largest pilgrimage for Muslims.^[10]

Another important place for Muslims is the city of Medina, the second holiest place in Islam, in Saudi Arabia, where Muhammad rests in Al-Masjid al-Nabawi (the Mosque of the Prophet).

The ihram (white robes of pilgrimage) is meant to show equality of all pilgrims in the eyes of Allah: that there is no difference between a prince and a pauper. Ihram is also symbolic for holy virtue and pardon from all past sins.

While wearing the ihram in Mecca, a pilgrim may not shave, clip their nails, wear perfume, swear or quarrel, hunt, kill any creature, uproot or damage plants, cover the head for men or the face and hands for women, marry, wear shoes over the ankles, perform any dishonest acts or carry weapons. If they do any of these their pilgrimage is invalid .

Judaism[link]

The Wailing Wall is all that remains of the Western wall of the Temple in Jerusalem.

The Temple in Jerusalem was the center of the Jewish religion, until its destruction in 70 CE, and all adult men who were able were required to visit and offer sacrifices (korbanot), particularly during Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.

Following the destruction of the Second Temple and the onset of the diaspora, the centrality of pilgrimage to Jerusalem in Judaism was discontinued. In its place came prayers and rituals hoping for a return to Zion and the accompanying restoration of regular pilgrimages.

Until recent centuries, pilgrimage had been a fairly difficult and arduous adventure. But now, Jews from many countries make periodic pilgrimages to the holy sites of their religion.

The western retaining wall of the original temple, known as the Wailing Wall, or Western Wall remains in the Old City of Jerusalem and this has been the most sacred site for religious Jews. Pilgrimage to this area was off-limits from 1948 to 1967, when East Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan.

There are numerous lesser Jewish pilgrimage sites, mainly tombs of tzadikim, throughout the Land of Israel and all over the world, including: Hebron; Bethlehem; Mt. Meron; Netivot; Uman, Ukraine; Silistra, Bulgaria; Damanhur, Egypt; and many others.^[11]

Sikhism[link]

A Sikh pilgrim at Harmandir Sahib (the Golden Temple) in Amritsar

The Sikh religion does not place great importance on pilgrimage. Guru Nanak Dev was asked "Should I go and bathe at pilgrimage places?" and replied: "God's name is the real pilgrimage place which consists of contemplation of the word of God, and the cultivation of inner knowledge."

Eventually, however, Amritsar and Harmandir Saheb (the Golden Temple) became the centre of the Sikh faith, and if a Sikh goes on pilgrimage it is usually to this place considered the spiritual and cultural centre of Sikhs rather than a pilgrimage.^[12]

Zoroastrianism[link]

The Zoroastrians take pilgrimage trips in India to the eight Atash Behrams in India and one in Yazd.

Meher Baba[link]

The main pilgrimage sites associated with the spiritual teacher Meher Baba are Meherabad, India, where Baba completed the "major portion"^[13] of his work and where his tomb is now located, and Meherazad, India, where Baba resided later in his life.

Secular pilgrimage[link]

In modern usage, the terms pilgrim and pilgrimage have developed in sense to include sites of secular importance. For example, fans of Elvis Presley may choose to visit his home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee. Visits to war memorials such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial are often seen as pilgrimages. Similarly one may refer to a cultural center such as Venice as a "tourist Mecca." Historic preservation groups sometimes refer to house and garden tours of antebellum homes as Fall or Spring Pilgrimage. Tickets to these tours are sold to raise funds for preservation activities.

Paris Commune[link]

The Père Lachaise Cemetery, where the defenders of the Paris Commune made their last stand and many of them were afterwards summarily executed, is the focus of annual pilgrimages by parties and organizations of the French Left.

Communism[link]

In a number of Communist countries, secular pilgrimages were established as an "antidote" to religious pilgrimages, the most famous of which are:

• USSR: Mausoleum of Lenin in Red Square, Moscow
• PRC: Mausoleum of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square, Beijing
• Germany: Birthplace of Karl Marx, Trier

Fascism[link]

The mausoleum of Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini in Predappio, Italy serves as a pilgrimage site for Italian Neo-Fascists. In post-World War II Germany, considerable efforts were made to prevent Hitler's bunker in Berlin from becoming a similar place of pilgrimage for Neo-Nazis.

See also[link]

• Burial places of founders of world religions
• HCPT – The Pilgrimage Trust
• Junrei
• List of shrines
• List of significant religious sites
• Monastery
• Pardon (ceremony)
• Romeria
• Sacred travel
• World Youth Day

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2010)

• al-Naqar, Umar. 1972. The Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa. Khartoum: Khartoum University Press. [includes a map 'African Pilgrimage Routes to Mecca, ca. 1300-1900']
• Coleman, Simon and John Elsner (1995), Pilgrimage: Past and Present in the World Religions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• Coleman, Simon & John Eade (eds) (2005), Reframing Pilgrimage. Cultures in Motion. London: Routledge.
• Davidson, Linda Kay and David M. Gitlitz (2002), Pilgrimage: From the Ganges to Graceland: An Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, Ca.: ABC-CLIO.
• Gitlitz, David M. and Linda Kay Davidson (2006). Pilgrimage and the Jews. Westport, CT: Praeger.
• Jackowski, Antoni. 1998. Pielgrzymowanie [Pilgrimage]. Wroclaw: Wydawnictwo Dolnoslaskie.
• Kerschbaum & Gattinger, Via Francigena - DVD- Documentation, of a modern pilgrimage to Rome, ISBN 3-200-00500-9, Verlag EUROVIA, Vienna 2005
• Margry, Peter Jan (ed.) (2008), Shrines and Pilgrimage in the Modern World. New Itineraries into the Sacred. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
• Sumption, Jonathan. 2002. Pilgrimage: An Image of Mediaeval Religion. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.
• Wolfe, Michael (ed.). 1997. One Thousands Roads to Mecca. New York: Grove Press.
• Zarnecki, George (1985), The Monastic World: The Contributions of The Orders. pp. 36–66, in Evans, Joan (ed.). 1985. The Flowering of the Middle Ages. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.

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Poetic Pilgrimage is a British Muslim hip-hop duo founded in 2002. It is one of only a very few female Muslim musical groups.

Poetic Pilgrimage is a female Hip Hop and Spoken Word duo who wish to take the world by storm with their sounds, lyrics and individual, personal characters. They are a rare act, being one of the few Muslim female Hip Hop artists around and express themselves through the art of rhyme, covering personal, social issues / themes whilst also working to ensure that they do not compromise their personal beliefs.

Background[link]

Poetic Pilgrimage is made up of members Muneera Rashida and Sukina Abdul Noor. Both ladies are of the Afro-Caribbean background and converted to Islam in 2005.

Muneera Rashida and Sukina Abdul Noor were both born in Bristol to Jamaican parents, and have been performing together as Poetic Pilgrimage for 7 years now. The early part of their career saw them as favourites on the London poetry circuit where they performed alongside some of the biggest names often to standing ovations and they have become forerunners in the UK Muslim Hip Hop scene, bridging the gap between their community and the wider Hip Hop and music scene.

Biography[link]

Sukina Abdul Noor: (born Yashima Douglas) holds a BA (Hons) Degree in English Literature and Caribbean Studies from London Metropolitan University, she was also the editor of a Muslim Hip Hop magazine and hosts a lifestyle Show on Islam Channel. She organises a monthly Poetry event in West London and she has been conducting workshops for over one year. Sukina is married to Mohammed Yahya who is also a Spoken Word Artist / Rapper and is part of the band called Lines of Faith.

Muneera Rashida: (born Tanya Williams) holds a BA Degree from the University of Westminster in Creative Media Practice where her expertise lay in the field of Video Production and Film Studies. Muneera is also an event organiser where she mentors young upcoming artists giving career and performance advice. Muneera is also a youth mentor and has worked in various youth clubs.

History[link]

Their intention is to make progressive Hip Hop music that fuses their African and Caribbean roots with their musical tastes such as Jazz, Afrobeat, Soul and beyond, providing a novel backdrop to their message of peace, unity, interfaith relations and freedom. They have travelled to various countries particularly Europe (and also hope to travel more frequently to Africa) where the spirit of Hip Hop still exists and have collaborated and worked with artists of the same genre but they also hope to fuse Hip Hop with more traditional sounds from countries such as Senegal, Mali and Morocco. Poetic Pilgrimage have already begun to realise this ambition of theirs by collaborating with musical artists of other faiths. November 2009 saw them collaborate and perform alongside Kavona, a Jewish musical band under the name of YALLA to produce sounds which fused Hip Hop, Spoken Word, Jewish folk music with lyrics in English, Arabic and Yiddish. November 2009 has also seen them perform in mainland Europe in Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK. They have also performed in the US. Poetic Pilgrimage are the first UK Artist to have performed at The International Trinity Festival Connecticut during their first American tour in March - April 2009.

In addition Poetic Pilgrimage are workshop facilitators and value the ability to teach Poetry and Hip Hop to a younger generation with the aim of being able to enable them change their realities, so they also incorporate their workshops with their music shows in the countries they travel to. Through their workshops they tackle various social issues and aim to counteract the negative impact of some of these using Hip Hop and Grime. As young Muslim women of African-Caribbean heritage they challenge stereotypes and inspire others to do the same.

Discography[link]

Television appearances[link]

• BBC2: Desi DNA
• ITV: "The Muslim Jesus". This documentary showed them performing "Modern Day Marys", which is a tribute to Muslim women likening them to Mary, mother of Jesus.
• Al Jazeera: Everywoman
• Norwegian National TV
• Swedish National TV
• Islam Channel: City Sisters, Behind the Veil
• Press TV: Nexus

Press coverage[link]

1. New Nation
2. Eastern Eye
3. New Statesman:^[1]
4. Al-Ahram Weekly:^[2]
5. The Independent:^[3]
6. NRK (Norway):^[4]
7. Emel
8. The Platform Magazine
9. Hip Hop Connection
10. Muslim Views

Radio appearances[link]

• BBC Midlands Masala

References[link]

External links[link]

• Poetic Pilgrimage on Myspace
• Poetic Pilgrimage on Twitter
• Poetic Pilgrimage on Facebook
• www.starwomenmixtape.com

Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog in Brussels, 2007
Born	Werner Herzog Stipetić (1942-09-05) 5 September 1942 (age 69) Munich, Germany
Occupation	Actor Director Screenwriter Producer
Years active	1962–present
Spouse	Martje Grohmann (1967–1987) Christine Maria Ebenberger (1987–1994) Lena Herzog (1999–present)
Website
http://www.wernerherzog.com

Werner Herzog Stipetić (German pronunciation: [ˈʋɛɐ̯nɐ ˈhɛɐ̯tsoːk ˈstɪpɛtɪtʃ]; born 5 September 1942), known as Werner Herzog, is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.

He is often considered one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Schröter, and Wim Wenders. His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams,^[1] people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature.^[2] French filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog "the most important film director alive."^[3]

Personal life[link]

Herzog was born Werner Herzog Stipetić to a German father Dietrich Herzog and a Croatian mother^[4] Elizabeth Stipetić in Munich. His family moved to the remote Bavarian village of Sachrang (nestled in the Chiemgau Alps), after the house next to theirs was destroyed during a bombing raid at the close of World War II.^[5] When he was 12, he and his family moved back to Munich. His father had abandoned the family early in his youth. Werner would later adopt his father's surname Herzog (German for "duke"), which he thought sounded more impressive for a filmmaker.^[6]

The same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school and he adamantly refused. He was almost expelled for this and until the age of 18 listened to no music, sang no songs, and studied no instruments. He later said that he would easily give 10 years from his life to be able to play an instrument. At 14, Herzog was inspired by an encyclopedia entry about filmmaking which he says provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a filmmaker—that, and the 35 mm camera he stole from the Munich Film School.^[7] In the commentary for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he states, "I don't consider it theft—it was just a necessity—I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with." He studied at the University of Munich despite earning a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. While in his teens he travelled to various exotic places.

In the early 1960s, Herzog worked nightshifts as a welder in a steel factory to help fund his first films. He has spoken of how, even before leaving school, he bought a house in the UK, in what was likely the Moss Side area of Manchester, relating how it was there that he learned to speak English.^[8] In 1966 he worked shortly in television under the auspices of NASA.^[9]

Herzog has been married three times and has three children. In 1967, he married Martje Grohmann,^[10] with whom he had a son in 1973, Rudolph Amos Achmed,^[11] who is a film producer and director as well as the author of several non-fiction books.

In 1971 while he was location scouting for Aguirre, the Wrath of God in Peru he narrowly avoided taking LANSA Flight 508 which later disintegrated after being struck by lightning with one miraculous free-fall survivor. His reservation was canceled due to a last minute change in itinerary. This led to the making in 2000 of a documentary film Wings of Hope which explored the story of the sole survivor, Juliane Koepcke.

In 1980, his daughter, Hanna Mattes (now a photographer and an artist), was born to Eva Mattes.^[12] In 1987, Herzog was divorced from Grohmann; later the same year he married Christine Maria Ebenberger.^[13] Their son, Simon Herzog, who attends Columbia University, was born in 1989. Herzog and Ebenberger divorced in 1994. In 1995, Herzog moved to the United States, and in 1999 he married photographer Lena Pisetski, now Lena Herzog.^[14] They live in Los Angeles.

In January 2006, actor Joaquin Phoenix overturned his car on a road above Sunset Boulevard. Herzog, who lived nearby, helped him get out of the car.^[15] A few days later, while Herzog was giving an interview to Mark Kermode for the BBC, an unknown individual shot Herzog with an air rifle during filming. Herzog continued the interview and showed his wound on camera but acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, remarking, "It is not a significant bullet."^[16][17]

Career[link]

Besides using professional actors, German, American and otherwise, Herzog is known for using people from the locality in which he is shooting. Especially in his documentaries, he uses locals to benefit his, as he calls it, "ecstatic truth", using footage of them both playing parts and being themselves. Herzog and his films have won and been nominated for many awards. Herzog's first major award was the Silver Bear Extraordinary Prize of the Jury for his first feature film Signs of Life^[18] (Nosferatu the Vampyre was also nominated for Golden Bear in 1979). Most notably, Herzog won the best director award for Fitzcarraldo at the 1982 Cannes Film Festival. On the same Festival, but a few years earlier (in 1975) his movie The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser won The Special Jury Prize (also known as the 'Silver Palm'). Other films directed by Herzog nominated for Golden Palm are: Woyzeck and Where the Green Ants Dream. His films were also nominated at many other very important festivals all around the world: César Awards (Aguirre, the Wrath of God), Emmy Awards (Little Dieter Needs to Fly), European Film Awards (My Best Fiend) and Venice Film Festival (Scream of Stone and The Wild Blue Yonder).

In 1987 he and his half-brother Lucki Stipetić won the Bavarian Film Awards for Best Producing, for the film Cobra Verde.^[19] In 2002 he won the Dragon of Dragons Honorary Award during Kraków Film Festival in Kraków.

Herzog was honored at the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, receiving the 2006 Film Society Directing Award.^[20] Four of his films have been shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival: Wodaabe - Herdsmen of the Sun in 1990, Bells from the Deep in 1993, Lessons of Darkness in 1993, and The Wild Blue Yonder in 2006. Herzog's April 2007 appearance at the Ebertfest in Champaign, Illinois earned him the Golden Thumb Award, and an engraved glockenspiel given to him by a young film maker inspired by his films. Grizzly Man, directed by Herzog, won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Encounters at the End of the World won the award for Best Documentary at the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, Herzog's first nomination.

Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if Errol Morris completed the movie project on pet cemeteries that he had been working on, in order to challenge and motivate Morris, whom Herzog perceived as incapable of following up on the projects he conceived. In 1978 when the film Gates of Heaven premiered, Werner Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe, an event later incorporated into a short documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe by Les Blank. At the event, Herzog suggested that he hoped the act would serve to encourage anyone having difficulty bringing a project to fruition.

In 2009, Herzog became the only filmmaker in recent history to enter two films in competition in the same year at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans was entered into the festival's official competition schedule, and his My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? entered the competition as a "surprise film".^[21] Herzog also provided the narration for the short film Plastic Bag directed by Ramin Bahrani which was the Opening Night film in the Corto Cortissimo section of the festival.^[22]

Herzog is also a Jury Member for the digital studio Filmaka, a platform for undiscovered filmmakers to show their work to industry professionals.^[23]

Herzog was the President of the Jury at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.^[24][25][26] He Was the Chief guest of the 15th International Film Festival of Kerala(IFFK 2010 December)

Herzog also lent his voice to the animated television program The Boondocks in the third season premiere episode It's a Black President, Huey Freeman in which he played himself filming a documentary about the series' cast of characters and their actions during the 2008 election of Barack Obama. He also played Walter Hotenhoffer (formerly known as Augustus Gloop) in the Simpsons episode The Scorpion's Tale which aired in March 2011.

Herzog completed a documentary called Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 2010, which shows Herzog's journey into the Chauvet Cave in France. Although generally skeptical of 3-D film as a format,^[27] Herzog premiered the film at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival in 3-D and had its European premiere at the 2011 Berlinale.

Also in 2010, Herzog's documentary Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, which portrays the life of an indigenous tribe from the Siberian part of the Taiga, had its premiere at the 2010 Telluride Film Festival.

Film theory[link]

Herzog's films have received considerable critical acclaim and achieved popularity on the art house circuit. They have also been the subject of controversy in regard to their themes and messages, especially the circumstances surrounding their creation.^{[citation needed]} A notable example is Fitzcarraldo, in which the obsessiveness of the central character was mirrored by the director during the making of the film, as shown in Burden of Dreams, a documentary filmed during the making of Fitzcarraldo. His treatment of subjects has been characterized as Wagnerian in its scope, as Fitzcarraldo and his later film Invincible (2001) are directly inspired by opera, or operatic themes. He is proud of never using storyboards and often improvising large parts of the script, as he explains on the commentary track to Aguirre, the Wrath of God.

Collaborations[link]

Cast[link]

Actors/Actress in a Leading Role

• Klaus Kinski: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nosferatu, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde. In 1999 Herzog directed and narrated the documentary film My Best Fiend, a retrospective on his often rocky relationship with Kinski.
• Brad Dourif in Scream of Stone, The Wild Blue Yonder, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
• Bruno S. in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek
• Josef Bierbichler in Heart of Glass and Woyzeck
• Eva Mattes in Woyzeck and Stroszek
• Michael Shannon in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

Actors in a Supporting Role

• Clemens Scheitz in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass, Stroszek and Nosferatu the Vampyre
• Peter Berling in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde
• Volker Prechtel in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass, Woyzeck and Scream of Stone
• Udo Kier in Invincible and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done?
• José Lewgoy in Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde
• Walter Ladengast in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Nosferatu the Vampyre

Crew[link]

Cinematographers

Thomas Mauch

Mauch worked with Herzog on ten films: starting with Signs of Life and Last Words and ending with Fitzcarraldo. He helped to create hallucinogenic atmosphere in Aguirre and realistic style of Stroszek. Mauch won Film Award in Gold and National Society of Film Critics Awards for Aguirre. He was Herzog's first choice to be cinematographer during Cobra Verde, but after a perpetual torrent of verbal abuse from Kinski, Mauch walked out on the project. That was Mauch and Herzog's final collaboration.

Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein

Reitwein worked with Herzog on seventeen films. Reitwein was Thomas Mauch's assistant camera during Even Dwarfs Started Small. His first independent work for Herzog was Precautions Against Fanatics in 1969. He helped to create poetical atmosphere of Fata Morgana, Heart of Glass, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Nosferatu. He won the Film Award in Gold for Heart of Glass and Where the Green Ants Dream at the German Film Awards. He last collaborated with Herzog during Pilgrimage in 2001.

Peter Zeitlinger

Zeitlinger collaborated with Herzog on thirteen films, from Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) to now filming television documentary Death Row (2011), including Rescue Dawn and Grizzly Man. He was nominated for Chlotrudis Award for Encounters at the End of the World in 2007 and for Independent Spirit Award for Bad Lieutenant. Port of Call: New Orleans in 2009.

Producers

Walter Saxer

Saxer produced sixteen of Herzog's films, including Nosferatu and The White Diamond. He worked as Sound Department during seven of Herzog's films, including The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner and Echoes from a Somber Empire. He co-wrote Scream of Stone which Herzog directed. Saxer appeared as himself in Herzog's My Best Fiend and in Les Blank's Burden of Dreams, in which he was also subjected to the verbal abuse of Kinski.

Lucki Stipetić

Stipetić is Herzog's half-brother. He also produced several Herzog films, including Aguirre and Invincible, and is a head of Werner Herzog Productions. He won Bavarian Film Award in 1988 for Cobra Verde and International Documentary Association Award for Little Dieter Needs to Fly in 1998. He was also nominated for an Emmy Award in 1998.

André Singer

Singer worked either as an executive producer or producer on eight of Herzog’s documentaries starting with “Lessons of Darkness” in 1991, “The Wild Blue Yonder” – won the International Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival, 2006 and including two of the most recent “La Boheme, short”, 2009, and “Into the Abyss”/”Death Row”, 2011.

Editors

Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus

Mainka-Jellinghaus worked with Herzog on twenty films, from Signs of Life and Last Words (both from 1968) to Where the Green Ants Dream (1984). She won Film Award in Gold during German Film Awards for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser in 1975.

Joe Bini

Bini collaborated with Herzog on nineteen films, from Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) to Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2009). He was nominated by American Cinema Editors for Best Edited Documentary Film for Grizzly Man in 2005.

Costumes designers

Ann Poppel

Poppel collaborated with Herzog on four films, including Nosferatu the Vampyre and Scream of Stone.

Gisela Storch

Storch worked with Herzog on six films: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde. She was nominated for a Saturn Award for Nosferatu the Vampire in 1979.

Composers

Popol Vuh

Popol Vuh was a German Krautrock band founded by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke. The band took its name from the Popol Vuh, a manuscript of Quiché Maya kingdom, after watching Herzog's Fata Morgana (in which Lotte Eisner reads parts of the Popol Vuh). The band composed music for eight Herzog's films: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Heart of Glass, Nosferatu, The Dark Glow of the Mountains, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde and My Best Fiend. Their compositions were also used by Herzog in Rescue Dawn. Florian Fricke made a cameo as a pianist in Signs of Life and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.

Ernst Reijseger

Herzog invited Reijseger to compose scores for his films four times to that date. Two of them were documentaries (The White Diamond an Cave of Forgotten Dreams) and two were features (The Wild Blue Yonder and My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done). His music was also used in Rescue Dawn and in video documentary short about recording music for Grizzly Man titled In the Edges: The 'Grizzly Man' Session directed by Erik Nelson. Reijseger also had a cameo as himself in My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done.

Others

Henning von Gierke

Gierke collaborated with Herzog on seven films and several operas. He was Production Designer during The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Nosferatu the Vampyre and Fitzcarraldo. As a Set Decorator he worked on Heart of Glass and Woyzeck, as Stage Designer on operas: Lohengrin and Giovanna d'Arco and as Costume Designer on film The Transformation of the World Into Music. Gierke shot additional still photographs on Stroszek 's set. He appeared twice in Herzog's film The Transformation of the World Into Music as himself and in Herzog's TV realisation of opera Giovanna d'Arco. Von Gierke won Film Award in Gold for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser during German Film Awards and Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement for Nosferatu, at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival.^[28]

Filmography[link]

Fiction feature films[link]

• Signs of Life (1968)
• Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)
• Fata Morgana (1972)
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
• The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
• Heart of Glass (1976)
• Stroszek (1977)
• Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
• Woyzeck (1979)
• Fitzcarraldo (1982)
• Where the Green Ants Dream (1984)
• Cobra Verde (1987)
• Scream of Stone (1991)
• Invincible (2001)
• The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)
• Rescue Dawn (2007)
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
• My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

Fiction short films[link]

• Herakles (1962)
• Game in The Sand (1964)
• The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1966)
• Last Words (1968)
• Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)
• No One Will Play With Me (1976)
• Les Gaulois (1988)

Documentary feature films[link]

• The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969)
• Handicapped Future (1971)
• Land of Silence and Darkness (1971)
• The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974)
• How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)
• Huie's Sermon (1980)
• God's Angry Man (1980)
• Ballad of the Little Soldier (1984)
• The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1984)
• Wodaabe – Herdsmen of the Sun (1989)
• Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990)
• Jag Mandir (1991)
• Lessons of Darkness (1992)
• Bells from the Deep (1993)
• The Transformation of the World into Music (1994)
• Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995)
• Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997)
• My Best Fiend (1999)
• Wings of Hope (2000)
• Wheel of Time (2003)
• The White Diamond (2004)
• Grizzly Man (2005)
• Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
• Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)
• Into the Abyss (2011)

Documentary short films[link]

• La Soufrière (1977)
• Portrait Werner Herzog (1986)
• Christ and demons in New Spain (1999)
• Pilgrimage (2001)
• Ten Thousand Years Older (2002)
• La bohème (2009)
• On Death Row (2012) TV miniseries in four, hour-long episodes

Screenwriter[link]

Films written, not directed, by Herzog:

• Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)

Herzog has written all his films, except these which he co-wrote:

• Scream of Stone (1991)
• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009)
• My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

Herzog has also co-written:

• Hunger in the world explained to my son (El hambre en el mundo explicada a mi hijo) (2002)
• Incident at Loch Ness (2004)
• Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2010)

Actor[link]

• Geschichten vom Kübelkind (1971)
• Man of Flowers (1983)
• Bride of the Orient (1989)
• Hard to Be a God (1990)
• Tales from the Opera (1994)
• Burning Heart (1995)
• What Dreams May Come (1998)
• Julien Donkey-Boy (1999)
• Incident at Loch Ness (2004)
• Mister Lonely (2007)
• The Grand (2007)
• Plastic Bag (2009)
• The Simpsons Ep. 479 (2010) Voice role
• The Boondocks Ep. 31 (2010) Voice role
• Metalocalypse Ep. 50, 52 & 53 (2012) Voice role
• American Dad! Ep. 132 (2012) Voice role
• One Shot (2013)

Stage works[link]

Opera[link]

• Doktor Faustus (1986, Teatro Comunale di Bologna)
• Lohengrin (1987, Bayreuth Festival)^[29]
• Giovanna d'Arco (1989, Teatro Comunale di Bologna)
• La Donna del lago (1992, Teatro alla Scala, Milan)
• The Flying Dutchman (1993, L'Opéra de la Bastille)
• Il Guarany (1993, Opera Bonn)
• Norma (1994, Verona Arena)
• Il Guarany (1996, Washington National Opera)
• Chushingura (1997, Tokyo Opera)
• Tannhäuser (1997, 1998 Teatro de la Maestranza; Teatro di San Carlo; Teatro Massimo)
• The Magic Flute (1999, Teatro Bellini, Catania)
• Fidelio (1999, Teatro alla Scala)
• Tannhäuser (Wagner) (2000)
• Giovanna d'Arco (2001, Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa)
• Tannhäuser (2001, Teatro Municipal; Houston Grand Opera)
• Die Zauberflöte (2001, Baltimore Opera)
• The Flying Dutchman (2002, DomStufen Festspiele Erfurt)
• Parsifal (2008, Palau de les Arts, Valencia)

Theatre[link]

• Floresta Amazonica (A Midsummer Night's Dream) (1992, Teatro Joao Caetano)
• Varété (1993, Hebbel Theatre)
• Specialitaeten (1993, Etablissement Ronacher)

Bibliography[link]

Books

Writer:

• Of Walking In Ice (Free Association, New York, 2007, ISBN 978-0-9796121-0-7)
• Fitzcarraldo: The Original Story (Fjord Pr, January 1983, ISBN 978-0-940242-04-3)
• "Conquest of the Useless" Herzog's diaries of the making of "Fitzcarraldo"

Co-writer:

• Paul Cronin. Herzog on Herzog (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2002, ISBN 0-571-20708-1) (extracts^[30])
• Lena Herzog. Pilgrims: Becoming the Path Itself (Periplus Publishing London Ltd., ISBN 1-902699-43-2)

Screenplays

Writer:

• Cobra Verde (Jade-Flammarion 2001, ISBN 2-08-203009-1)
• Wo Die Grünen Ameisen Träumen (Hanser 1984, ISBN 3-446-14106-5)
• Nosferatu (Ulbulibri, 1984)
• Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu, Stroszek (Mazarine 1982)
• Screenplays: Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Every Man For Himself and God Against All & Land of Silence and Darkness (translated by Alan Greenberg & Martje Herzog; Tanam, New York, ISBN 0-934378-03-7)
• Drehbücher III: Stroszek, Nosferatu (Hanser 1979)
• Drehbücher II: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes: Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle, Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit (Hanser 1977)
• Drehbücher I: Lebenszeichen, Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen, Fata Morgana (Hanser 1977)

Co-writer:

• Alan Greenberg & Herbert Achternbusch. Heart of Glass 1976

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Werner Herzog

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Werner Herzog

• Official website
• Werner Herzog at the Internet Movie Database
• Encounters with Herzog a film competition. Judged by Herzog on the independent filmmakers networking community Shooting People.