France,
1988, 52 min
Shown in 1990
CREDITS
- dir
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Werner Herzog
- prod
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Patrick Sandrin
- source
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Interama, 301 Wet 53rd St., Suite 19E, New York,NY, 10019, USA, FAX: 212-581-6582
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COMMENTS
Shown with The Giant Woman and the Lightening Man in a program titled Magicians in the Sun: Films by Philip Hass and Werner Herzog.
OTHER
Filmmakers Philip Haas and Werner Herzog have captured stunning images from the world's cultural treasury of traditional art forms. In The Herdsmen of the Sun, Herzog, a prolific documentarian, (though better known for such features as Aguirre, Wrath of God), records a rare, bright moment for the Wodaabe, a tribe of nomads in the African Sahel. In 1988 the best rains in 60 years brought respite from the region's chronic drought and long-delayed markets, weddings and festivals could be held. The Wodaabe consider themselves to be the most beautiful people in the world. At the height of their festival, Wodaabe men adorn and display themselves to be chosen by women in a contest celebrating beauty and love. Oddly, Herzog scores his work with Mozart, Handel and Verdi, perhaps to state that his camera can observe but never truly bridge the gulf between our western eyes and the Wodaabe's world.
—George Eldred and Alicia Springer
FACTOID #328
Saul Bass, the genius graphic designer behind the introductory sequences to Hitchcock’s Psycho, Vertigo and North by Northwest, designed the posters for the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth installments of the San Francisco International Film Festival.
