OPENING OF THE BEAT PRESSER PHOTO EXHIBITION
The photo exhibition Werner Herzog. Films must be physical by Swiss photographer Beat Presser renders in unique fashion the physical dimension in the work of Herzog, the ever restless and original German filmmaker. The exhibition held in the ΜΙΕΤ bookshop opened yesterday Saturday November 14th as part of a tribute to the famous German director organised by the 50th Thessaloniki International Film Festival in collaboration with the Goethe Institutes in Thessaloniki and Athens and with the Werner Herzog Film.
Fifty photographs shot by Beat Presser during the making of Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde and Invincible capture the filmmaker at work as he runs up and down giving directions. They clearly show why Herzog himself describes directing primarily as "athletic work". His belief is that to give a sense of reality to a scene one must first experience it, a process that quickly turns into a test of one’s own limits.
The exhibition curator Marion Inglesi pointed out that “Beat Presser followed Werner Herzog in his more adventurous films. He immortalized a weak and emaciated Herzog who was living up to his own words: ‘films must be physical’.”
The Director of the Thessaloniki Goethe Institute, Karl-Heinz Thalmann, also spoke on the occasion saying that the exhibition is a documentary on Werner Herzog’s own physical limits, adding that “this was what the director himself asked from his collaborators and actors.” A clear choice that led this exceptional film director to embark on impossible trips for the sake of his films.
