Werner Herzog, master film maker, has served up a delicious documentary filmed on location at Kaieteur Falls, Guyana in 2004. The film starts out on a technical note reviewing the history of air flight, especially airships, and focuses on Graham Dorrington, a geeky aeronautical engineer who is a lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London, who is planning to test a tear-drop shaped airship above Guyana's jungle canopy. Dorrington becomes quite the humanist in front of Herzog's camera as he recounts the tragic death in Sumatra of his colleague cinematographer Dieter Plage. Bellow aficionados will recognize the scientist/humanist dichotomy explored in The Dean's December, yet in Dorrington, these two world views share the same brain. The scenes of Kaieteur are spectacular, especially watching the millions of white-tipped swifts (Aeronautes montivagus) which roost in inaccessible caves behind the falls. At one point Herzog is able to film the secret nesting place of the huge swift colony. Herzog shows the local chief explaining that showing the nesting grounds to others will bring disaster--and then leaves the actual footage of the nests out of the picture! There is anawesome scene in this film where Herzog shoots the upside-down reflection of the mighty waterfall in a falling drop of rain. The soundtrack by Ernst Reijseger is haunting.Well, this is all very well, but a Rastafarian diamond miner by the name of Marc Anthony Yhap steals the show. He is the sole survivor in Guyana of an extended family that has emigrated to Malaga, Spain. In some ways, the film is a call home from a man who misses his family. Dorrington feels he exudes great wisdom. His innocent words are magical.
That is a beautiful view. It has a sunset and there is the balloon just floating
around aimlessly. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's just fantastic. I'm so fortunate
enough to witness something of a gem. I'm a miner mostly, and this is like a
diamond. Nice big diamond. Yeah, I love this. This is cool. This is real cool.
There is this big white diamond just floating around in the sunrise. It's
good.Wow, I would like to use this craft to fly up to them, yeah. Even if it takes a whole year, months. I would love to have this craft to fly to them. Maybe land on the rooftop, give them a surprise. Yeah, it would be beautiful there, for me to be in the aircraft early in the morning. There is Marc Yhap at their doorstep saying, 'Hello, good morning.'
