WERNER HERZOG'S "ECSTATIC TRUTH"

Exploring the notion of "truth" in documentary and the thoughts of other practitioners I came across the text from a lecture given by a filmmaker I greatly admire Werner Herzog. Herzog works in both fiction and documentary films following a screening of his film “Lessons in darkness” in Milan in 1992 addressed the issues of reality in factual films well.

“Our entire sense of reality has been called into question. But I do not want to dwell on this fact any longer, since what moves me has never been reality, but a question that lies behind it [beyond; dahinter]: the question of truth. Sometimes facts so exceed our expectations—have such an unusual, bizarre power—that they seem unbelievable. But in the fine arts, in music, literature, and cinema, it is possible to reach a deeper stratum of truth—a poetic, ecstatic truth, which is mysterious and can only be grasped with effort; one attains it through vision, style, and craft.”

This "ecstatic truth" is an area I want to explore in my own work and it draws lots of my aims and aspirations. I agree with his thoughts of a deeper intuitive version of the truth existing and the filmmaker intrinsically knowing the content well and creating his or her version of the reality and aim to follow this path.