Grizzly Man

Sleepy Hollow Bloggers,

I found a recent news article about the maker of the film, "Grizzly Man", and it even mentions Timothy Treadwill in the article. I thought you guys might find it interesting! A new documentary by Werner Herzog, filmed in 2010 in the Siberian village of Bakhta, is making its theatrical debut. Maybe this is something we could watch in class sometime. Anyway, here is the article:

"Happy People: A Year in the Taiga"

Werner Herzog often seems a man out of time—the cinematic answer to the great explorers of the 19th century, jaunting to the ends of the Earth to capture extremes of human experience before the Internet homogenizes even the remotest of cultures.

The filmmaker's voyage to the Siberian village of Bakhta wasn't quite so rugged, even though the terrain is accessible only from air or river. He discovered the source material for this 2010 documentary (only now making its theatrical debut) on a visit to a Los Angeles neighbor, who was fascinated by hours of footage shot by the Russian documentarian Dmitry Vasyukov. Mr. Herzog became likewise awestruck by what he saw: an immersive journey into the Siberian forest (or taiga), where weathered trappers prove ever-resourceful in their combat with the elements, forging their own symbiotic relationship with even the harshest aspects of nature.

Rather than cash in his frequent-flier miles, Mr. Herzog collaborated with Mr. Vasyukov, recutting four hours of existing film into a concise 94 minutes, adding subtitles and his own inimitable narration—much as he did for "Grizzly Man," a documentary built around video footage left behind by activist outdoorsman Timothy Treadwell after he was killed by one of the bears he tracked each summer in the Alaskan wilds. No such sensational narrative drives "Happy People." Instead, what compels is Mr. Vasyukov's filmmaking-in-the-raw, which abides with its subjects over the course of a year.

That ethnographic rigor is enhanced by Mr. Herzog's voice, which can turn such basic enterprises as building a cabin out of mud, straw and timber or fending off the maelstrom of mosquitoes that plague the hunters into existential reveries—the kind of thing, at once dryly whimsical and coldly fatalistic, that long ago made Mr. Herzog's reputation.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324539304578260030921074780.html?mod=googlenews_wsj