Burden of Dreams (1982)

A film by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling. Get entire film here: http://lesblank.com/films/burden-of-dreams-1982/ An extraordinary feature-length documentary.

Screening at the 2011 Mendocino Film Festival.

Directed by Les Blank. With Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale, Jason Robards. A documentary on the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's epic Fitzcarraldo (1982), showing how the film managed to get made despite problems that would have floored a less obsessively driven director

Burden of Dreams is a 1982 "making-of" documentary film directed by Les Blank, shot during and about the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, and filmed on location in the jungles of Peru.

Les Blank's "Burden of Dreams" is one of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie. There are at least two reasons for that. One is that the movie being made, Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo," involved some of the most torturous and dangerous on-location shooting experiences in film history.

For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career, _Fitzcarraldo_, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made more perilous by Herzog’s determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of indigenous Peruvians to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded mission of one of cinema’s most fearless directors.

Documentary filmmaker Les Blank followed director Werner Herzog around during the stormy production of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. The result was Blank's Burden of Dreams, which many reviewers found more fascinating than Herzog's effort.

Amazon.com: Burden of Dreams (The Criterion Collection): Klaus Kinski, Werner Herzog, Miguel Angel Fuentes, Father Mariano Gagnon, José Lewgoy, Evaristo Nunkuag Ikanan, Huerequeque Enrique Bohorquez, Jorge Vignati, Laplace Martins, Walter Saxer, David Pérez Espinosa, Paul Hittscher, Thomas Mauch, Elia De Rio Ene, Nelson De Rio Cenepa, Mick Jagger, Jason Robards, Carmen Correa, Les Blank, Maureen Gosling: Movies & TV

For nearly five years, Werner Herzog worked on the most ambitious and difficult films of his career, Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, including a sequence requiring hundreds of native Indians to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain.

Whatever Les Blank focused upon, he always delved deeply into the soul of it. In his films, Les gives us intimate portraits of American Bluesmen such as Lightnin' Hopkins and Mance Lipscomb.