Burden of Dreams

94min - Amazon

Producer/Director: Les Blank

    Filmmaker Attending

For nearly five years, German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of his most ambitious and difficult films, FITZCARRALDO, the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house in the Amazon jungle. 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 native Indians to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. This extraordinary document of the filmmaking process is a unique look into the obsession of one of cinema's most fearless directors. BURDEN OF DREAMS was honored with a British Academy Award for Best Documentary of 1982.

http://www.lesblank.com/more/burden.html