One of the most influential filmmakers in New German Cinema and one of the most extreme personalities in film per se, larger-than-life Werner Herzog quickly gained recognition not only for creating some of the most fantastic narratives in film, but for pushing himself and his crew to unprecedented lengths, again and again, in order to achieve the effects he demanded. Born Werner Stipetic in Munich on September 5, 1942, Herzog tremendous intelligence from an early age, and recognized his future vocation in his early teens, when he began submitting scripts to German film producers.
Herzog began producing short films in college, and shot his premier feature, Lebenszeichen in 1968. The director followed it with a 1970 documentary about the disabled, Behinderte Zukunft (Handicapped Future). His second feature film, the 1970 Even Dwarfs Started Small, depicts the daily activities of a bunch of dwarfs and midgets in a German penal community, who descend into an anarchic state. He continued to shoot arthouse features throughout the '70s in his native Germany like Fata Morgana, Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit, Aguirre the Wrath of God, The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser , Heart of Glass, Die grosse Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner, Stroszek, Nosferatu ,Woyzeck, andGod's Angry Man.
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