Part of Weekend Classics and Music City Mondays

As chronicled with bravado in Les Blank’s making-of documentary BURDEN OF DREAMS (Fri-Mon, Aug 23-26), Werner Herzog is the reigning champ of impossible real-life adventures undertaken in the name of cinema. And this masterpiece is a backbreaking epic that ecstatically treads the line between a portrait of madness and a genuine expression of obsession. FITZCARRALDO fictionalizes the mad, true-life mission of South American rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski, with gusto) to establish an opera house in the Peruvian jungle — which can only be accomplished by hauling a gigantic river boat over a mountain. No special effects here — this is the real deal, with the impossible results executed before your eyes.

Programmers Note: You can catch BURDEN OF DREAMS and FITZCARRALDO back-to-back on Sun-Mon Aug 25-26.

"One of the great visions of the cinema, and one of the great follies. One would not have been possible without the other… As a document of a quest and a dream, and as the record of man's audacity and foolish, visionary heroism, there has never been another movie like it.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (Jan 1, 1982)

“FITZCARRALDO may well be a madman's dream, but it's also a fine, quirky, fascinating movie. It's a stunning spectacle, an adventure-comedy not quite like any other, and the most benign movie ever made about 19th-century capitalism running amok…an exotic, visual treat.” —Vincent Canby, New York Times (Oct 10, 1982)