Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inhere… - Werner Herzog

I have experienced comparable transformations in the realm of communications, beginning with ancient times. I remember the man working for the mayor's office in Wüstenrot in Swabia, a few hours from Munich and Sachrang, where my brother and I later lived for a year with our father. He was the town crier. There's an archaic German word for it. I heard him make his way through the village up to the Raitelberg, ringing his bell to get people's attention. Every three or four houses, he would stop and call out his "Hear ye, hear ye!" and announce official decrees and deadlines. From my early childhood, I knew what radio and newspapers were even though we didn't always have electricity, but I never saw a film. I had no notion of cinema. I didn't know such a thing existed until one day a man with a mobile projector came to us in our one-room village school in Sachrang and showed us

A few years ago, we had a family reunion on the coast of Spain, where my brother was living at the time. At his invitation and expense, we had a wonderful evening at a fish restaurant. My brother, sitting beside me, put his arm around me as I studied the menu. Something began to smoke; I felt a light prick at my back, and suddenly I realized that with his cigarette lighter he had set my shirt on fire. I tore it off, and everyone was aghast, but the pair of us laughed loudly at the joke that didn't seem funny to anyone else. Someone lent me a T-shirt for the rest of the evening, and the little sore patch of skin on my back was cooled with a splash of prosecco.

I am so used to plunging into the unknown that any other surroundings and form of existence strike me as exotic and unsuitable for human beings.