“If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dread from the trees … then the birds will drop dead from the trees” - the climatic words in Werner Herzog’s defining classic of German New Wave cinema. Filmed on a stolen 35mm camera in the heat and storms of the Peruvian Rainforest, director Werner Herzog created an extraordinary representation of both madness and imagination: regenerating a cinema in decay. Chronicling the journey of tyrannical conquistador Lope de Aguirre down the Amazon, Herzog weaves a tale of Conradian scope, capturing a newfound image of political and aesthetic realism.