Such authors are needed on TV: an example of Werner Herzog

In the comments to the post about the crisis of popular science channels, one of the users said very correct and exact words: “There is a very large, just a huge number of decent programs about science, animals, space, history, etc. But they will not show on the educational channel Discovery. No, you will watch as they dig in someone else’s garbage and treat a goat. ”

However, all is not lost. Like a visionary named Christopher Nolan once gave a new life to the “superhero movie”, now another visionary can save educational TV. His name is Werner Herzog.


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This person makes very unusual and interesting documentaries on various topics. Here, for example, "Where Green Ants Dream" - about the conflict of an Australian tribe and corporation that mines uranium at the site of an ancient sanctuary (this was long before the "Avatar" of James Cameron). But the "Land of silence and darkness" about the life of the blind and deaf in Bavaria. "The Ballad of the Little Soldier" about the civil war in Nicaragua, containing unique interviews with 12-year-old partisans. "Gasherbum is a shining mountain" about a mountaineer who decided to conquer all the peaks in the world. "Shepherds of the Sun" about the tribe of the nomads of the Sahara. "Echo of the dark empire" about the cannibal emperor Bokassa. "Lessons of Darkness" about the disaster at the oil field, the film is almost without dialogue. Fata Morgana about the phenomenon of optical illusions in the desert. “Happy people: a year in the taiga” about the life of the Russian village of Bakhta (you can read more here ). "Into the Abyss" - an investigation into the triple murder in Texas. “Encounters at the end of the world” about people who escaped from their past life in Antarctica. "White diamond" on the construction of the first hybrid of the ship and the balloon (and a test flight in South America - this was before the cartoon "Up"). The Grizzly Man is about a researcher who lived among bears (this was before Sean Ellis's Man among Wolfs). "The cave of forgotten dreams" about the drawings of Neanderthals, shot in 3D.

Here you can argue, but for some reason it seems to me that the films presented to the viewer will be more interesting than the contrived adventures of scavengers and veterinarians at least due to the “shock reaction” and extreme unusualness.

By the way, Herzog sometimes himself appears as a character in one of his films. Once this unsmiling German ate his own shoe , after losing the argument. He also heroically finished the interview, even after he was hit by a crazy fan.

But the greatest of his exploits is the feature film Fitzcarraldo , in which the protagonist, among other things, makes the henchmen roll the 320-ton steam ship through the mountain. So, the director hired carpenters who made a real ship. Then he hired local residents (only 1,100 people) so that they would truly draw him over the mountain . And so that you understand how serious it is, here is another fact: during the work of one of the carpenters, a poisonous snake bit in the foot and that he did not die had to amputate it. Personally, I suspect that Herzog himself did it. Chainsaw


Don't joke with him

However, we will not be distracted. On the example of Herzog, I tried to answer the tricky question "And if not the antiscientific low-grade entertaining, then what?" There are other great documentalists: Jacques Perrin (“Birds”, “Oceans”), Kevin MacDonald (“The Enemy of My Enemy”, “Touching the Void”, “Life in One Day”), Michael Wood (“Myths and Heroes”, “ In search of the Trojan War "). Jacques-Yves Cousteau, finally.

Someone may say that “the people will not be interested”, but in reality this is not so. The ratings of all the listed documentaries are at a high enough level to make their production and production profitable.

The point is also that humanity is gradually getting better. I know it's hard to believe, but it is. 20 years ago, the "working people" loved to drink and fight, today, instead, they watch funny videos and like pictures of kittens. This is real progress.

And users of digital and cable TV are still distinguished by a higher level of culture and education. And that means a little bit more brain-demanding documentaries they will watch with pleasure. Again, this is usually a very solvent audience (at the middle class level) and one hundred views from such people from the point of view of the advertiser will be much more weighty than thousands and thousands of views of insolvent children who “came to watch the talking dog”. Modern technologies allow TV channels to collect all the necessary information (for example, by analyzing user likes and data of individualized recommendations) to receive feedback from live viewers. If Don Draper were a real living person working in the media field, he would be the first to speak out against focus groups that provide incomplete and inaccurate results.

Meanwhile, the BBC has filmed, filmed and, apparently, will continue to shoot smart and interesting educational programs that enjoy the love of tens of millions of viewers around the world. Why are they so lucky? Because the Englishwoman shits they do not hold users for idiots who are incapable of the slightest intellectual effort.