If recent viewings of Grizzly Man and Rescue Dawn have you intrigued with Werner Herzog's work, check out his legendary Fitzcarraldo about Klaus Kinski trying to bring opera music to the Peruvian jungle, which is now playing at IFC Center with a new print. If you ever wondered why Herzog referred to himself as the "Conquistador of the Useless," Fitzcarraldo is the project that really encouraged his brilliant madness. It's one of the greatest potential disaster stories in film making and it won Herzog a best director prize at Cannes.
A rubber baron moves to Peru to build a remote opera house in the jungle and to make his fortune off of the backbreaking work of the natives. The only thing standing in his way: the real life steaming jungle. Herzog enlisted the services of hundreds of locals to drag his full-sized steam ship prop from one tributary of the Amazon to an other. He also ran up against the outsize personality of Kinski, whom a native chieftain even offered to murder for the frustrated Herzog. (He declined, since the movie hadn't finished filming yet.) Roger Ebert described the movie as "one of the great visions of the cinema, and one of the great follies." See the finished project, with all of its glorious rain forest cinematography, on the big screen at IFC, then rent Burden of Dreams (a making of documentary about the movie's disasters) and My Best Fiend (Herzog's film about his fraught relationship with Kinski) for a full Herzog weekend.
Get more acquainted with the work of Turkish filmmaker Zeki Demirkubuz at the Film Society's series devoted to his movies which runs through this weekend. Calling all New York real estate junkies, don't miss the last few days of Film Forum's showing of Hal Asbury's movie The Landlord about a very young Beau Bridges trying to gentrify Park Slope in the early '70s. On Monday at 7 pm, BAM will be hosting a free screening of the PBS documentary Words and Music by Jerry Herman, and a Q&A with director Amber Edwards to follow. (Tickets are first come, first serve half an hour before the film.) Also on Monday night, check out some short digital films about bartenders at Blue Owl Flicks screening at Cinema Village. The film starts at 7 pm and there will be an after party across the street at Blue Owl. The French Institute continues their film series devoted to up-in-coming directors with a screening on Tuesday of Isild Le Besco's movie Half Price about three children living by themselves in Paris. Le Besco will be on hand for the 7 pm showing.
