Echoes from a Somber Empire
Leaving April 30
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1h 29m
Directed by Werner Herzog • 1990 • Germany, France
One of director Werner Herzog’s most unsettling explorations of the madness that can seize men’s hearts, this haunting documentary recounts the reign of Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who ruled for eleven years as the self-declared emperor of the Central African Republic, presiding over a regime of shocking corruption. Told through the eyes of everyone from Bokassa’s wives to his political enemies to a foreign journalist he brutally imprisoned, ECHOES FROM A SOMBER EMPIRE is in some ways one of the director’s more straightforward documentaries—though in true Herzog fashion he makes room for everything from the swarming migration of the Christmas Island red crab to the unforgettable sight of a smoking chimpanzee.
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Heart of Glass
Directed by Werner Herzog • 1976 • West Germany
Starring Josef Bierbichler, Stefan Güttler, Clemens ScheitzIn the late eighteenth century, a Bavarian village succumbs to madness as the townsfolk search for the secret to creating the unique ruby glass that is their lifeblood, lost to them whe...
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Huie’s Sermon
Directed by Werner Herzog • 1981 • West Germany
Werner Herzog’s fascination with both religious mysticism and American subcultures leads him to a Black church in Brooklyn, where he documents a fire-and-brimstone sermon by the minister Huie L. Rogers. As Rogers’s explosive oratorical style reache...
