Herakles (film) - Director's Thoughts

Director's Thoughts

“My most immediate and radical lesson came from what was my first blunder, Herakles. It was a good thing to have made this little film first – rather than jump into something much more meaningful to me – because from that moment on I had a much better idea as to how I should go about my business. Learning from your mistakes is the only real way to learn.”

"For my first film Herakles I needed a good amount of cash, relatively speaking, because I wanted to start shooting in 35 mm and not 16 mm. For me filmmaking was only 35 mm; everything else seemed amateurish. 35 mm had the capacity to demonstrate, more than anything else, whether or not I had anything to offer, and when I started out I thought to myself, 'If I fail, I will fail so hard that I will never recover.'"

"Looking back on Herakles today, I find the film rather stupid and pointless, though at the time it was an important test for me. It taught me about editing together very diverse material that would not normally sit comfortably as a whole. For the film I took stock footage of an accident at Le Mans where something like eighty people died after fragments of a car flew into the spectators' stand, and inter-cut it with footage of bodybuilders, including Mr. Germany 1962. For me it was fascinating to edit material together that had such separate and individual lives. The film was some kind of an apprenticeship for me. I just felt it would be better to make a film than go to film school."