"Once again it is my pleasure and my privilege to be reporting to you from Venice, where the Cinema Biennale, known to the American trades as the Venice Film Festival, is unspooling, sort of, but not literally, given that more of the fare is projected from DCPs. Among other things the death of celluloid has deprived us of several fun metaphors. I'm also once again working with the Biennale College, the great program that funds adventurous filmmaking every year."
"Once considered eccentric by conventional documentary standards, his work in this category, which almost always features the director's oft-imitated voice narrating, has achieved sufficient mainstream acceptance that he's now backed by the filmmaking arm of National Geographic. As with so many of Herzog's other films, "Ghost Elephants" focuses on a man obsessed: Dr. Steve Boyes, a researched working with the Smithsonian, out in Angola, tracking the rumored pachyderm, a reclusive possible sub-species that's way bigger than the average elephant."
The Venice Cinema Biennale presents films projected digitally as celluloid declines, affecting metaphors and festival rituals. The Biennale College funds adventurous filmmaking annually and this year's lineup is judged the most outstanding in nine years, with an original 2015 start and a 2020 Covid interruption. Werner Herzog's documentary Ghost Elephants follows Smithsonian researcher Dr. Steve Boyes in Angola as he tracks a rumored, larger elephant subspecies. Herzog, once considered eccentric, now receives National Geographic backing. Evidence for the pachyderms includes footprints, dung piles, and Kalihari Bushmen tales. Some critics found Herzog's approach familiar and questioned the film's elephant visibility.
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