HERZOG VS. KINSKI

Upon learning of a land rich in gold called El Dorado, Gonzalo Pizarro, brother of Francisco, is induced to venture on an expedition of conquest beyond the Andes, at the beginning of 1560. Forced to stop in his tracks, Pizarro decides to send a patrol to explore along the river, placing Don Pedro de Ursua and his subordinate Don Lope de Aguirre in command. The raging river immediately puts their rafts in trouble. When Don Pedro decides to turn back to the base camp, Aguirre seizes the upper hand and names himself head of the expedition. He even writes a declaration of rebellion against Philip II of Castile. But due to hunger and continued attacks by the Indians, his strength slowly diminishes, until the self-proclaimed “Wrath of God” dies in late February 1561, in a tragic conclusion to his absurd mission of conquest.

Sent by his employer to Transylvania to negotiate for a property owned by Count Dracula, Jonathan Harker leaves Holland, turning a deaf ear to his wife Lucy’s ill omens. When he arrives at his destination, however, he finds himself in a sinister, disquieting place. Dracula, after having loaded caskets onto a wagon, disappears, leaving Jonathan shut in the castle. Meanwhile in Wismar, a ship full of rats arrives; the rats spill out into the streets and spread the plague. Jonathan also makes it to the city, but is ill and incapable of expressing himself. Lucy senses the truth after reading a book about vampires and decides to sacrifice herself by keeping Dracula occupied until the first rays of sunlight break through.

In the mid-19th century in a small town in Germany lives a soldier named Franz Woyzeck. He is a kind, naive fellow, a poor man with deep sentiments, bound to the servant Marie, who bore him a son. To feed his family, he tries to add to his very modest soldier’s pay by working as a barber for his captain and for several others, and by offering himself as a subject in a doctor’s experiments. The doctor obliges him to eat only peas in order to demonstrate the human being’s animal nature. Derided by his mates, Woyzeck confides only in his friend Andres, who nonetheless cannot offer him valid support. When he learns that Marie is cheating on him with the drum major, he becomes deeply depressed. Having given his few belongings to Andres, he buys an old knife from a second- hand dealer, takes Marie to the banks of a pond and kills her.

Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, better known as Fitzcarraldo, wants to build the largest opera house that ever existed, in Iquitos, in the middle of Amazonia. To inaugurate the theater, he plans to invite Caruso, a tenor he heard perform in a production of Ernani in Manaus. With the help of his wife Molly, he seeks sources of funding. Along the way, he realizes that the only way to earn enough money would be to exploit the rubber trees. However, Fitzcarraldo devises a plan: to navigate the unexplored Pachitea River, which runs parallel to the Ucayali. According to the maps he has consulted, the two rivers nearly touch at a certain point, separated by a single mountain. He has a boat restored and calls it the “Molly Aida”, sets off on his journey and manages to intrigue the locals. Indeed, the locals help him climb over the mountain with his boat, to avoid the rapids and then navigate downstream towards the rubber trees. In the end, though, Fitzcarraldo does not succeed in building his opera house; instead, he converts his boat into a stage, brings in many singers and musicians, and puts on a show that is finer than any the Amazon rainforest had ever seen before.

In the 50s, when he was still a teenager, Herzog shared an apartment with Klaus Kinski, an egocentric maniac of an actor. During an outburst of blind rage, Kinski destroyed all the furniture in the apartment in less than two days; but out of that chaos, a long-lasting working relationship and friendship were born. In this personal documentary, the director recalls the highs, the lows and the heated quarrels that marked his relationship with Kinski, returning to the very apartment in Munich where they first met and revisiting all the places where they made their films.

Francisco Manoel da Silva is a farmer in the Brazilian Sertao, which is suffering a drought. After having killed the boss of the mine he worked in because the boss wouldn’t pay his men, he travels around dressed as a bandit and is feared by all. One day hemanages to prevent one of Don Octavio Coutinho’s slaves from escaping; Don Octavio immediately hires him to supervise the work on his immense plantation. But when Don Octavio discovers that Francisco has gotten his three daughters pregnant, he sends him to Africa to take slaves he needs to work his fields. In Africa, Francisco first succeeds in obtaining an enormous number of slaves from a king, but is later sentenced to death. He is freed by the king’s brother, who in return asks for Francisco’s help in organizing a revolt against the sovereign. Francisco seems to have control of the situation once again, until the new king, who had in the meantime appointed him viceroy, sends him a cargo of cripples just as Brazil is about to vote to abolish slavery.