Of water and underwater.........

Off late, I have discovered a new Love for water, and things that go deeper....into the blue yonder...

I came across an interview with Werner Herzog on filming Encounters at the End of the World. You can read it by clicking HERE.

It takes me back to some brilliant deep-sea shots of a diver swimming in an alternate world of strange creatures that lurk and survive at the end of the world....at the deep end. They are spell-binding. It is a strange existence. Set to out of the world music by Henry Kaiser, you will be awed and maybe it just might reduce that inner fear of a shark-chase! (Are you reading this Sushmit?!)

Oh and this interview mentions a new film that Herzog is working on, which will be produced by David Lynch! Now that should screw my head right up!

Whether Herzog creates the obstacles in his way, or merely films them, the results are the same: there is ecstasy, awe, horror, a kind of bitterly compromised transcendence. "The distinction between fiction and documentary is the last thing I would spend a sleepless night over," he says. "It's all movies for me."

FALLING OFF THE MAP

What do you think of if you reach a place, beyond which there is nowhere to go? You would have reached the end of the world. Literally and figuratively Werner Herzog travels to such a place in his documentary Encounters at the end of the World.

Herzog lands in Antartica, and spends time with the people living there from physicists, zoologists and lorry drivers to travellers and lost souls. A young fella in an ice-cream vendors attire, squeezes out a vanilla cone while he is credited below as being a "Filmmaker, Computer Expert". These are your professional dreamers at the end of the world.

"Where else do you find guys with Phds doing the dishes, or linguists on the one place on earth where there is no native language."

You find them in a Herzog Film.

Herzog talks to a zoologist, an expert in Penguins about certain mysteries regarding the mammal. The zoologist has spent his whole life studying the life of Penguins, so much so that he has little to talk about to humans. And it is so evident while Herzog makes conversation with him. It makes you laugh, and yet it filled me with a strange kind of sympathetic joy. Herzog's question: "Can Penguins be driven by insanity?" The answer comes in the form of some amazing footage of a lone Penguin adventurer.

There's a deep sea diver who is certain about the end of the human race and loves to show doomsday B-movies to his colleagues.

And the jellyfish are hauntingly psychedelic.

What captures my feelings for this film, is when a female scientist studying seals says, "I can't describe the sounds of the seals below me, below the frozen sea we are on. I don't know, It's Pink Floyd."

Antartica can very well be a space station. It could even be the Moon.

I'm off the Map.