“黑暗的教训”-

1.  藉此宣言，所谓「真实电影」其实缺乏真实，它碰触到的仅仅是真实的表象，是如同会计师的真实。
2.  某位知名的「真实电影」代表人物曾公开宣称，拿起摄影机并尽量诚实以对，就能发掘真实。他就像是最高法院的夜间警卫，对繁复的法律条文与法律程序充满怨懟。他说：「对我而言，法律应该只有一条，那就是坏人就该被关起来。」不幸地，对多数人而言，大部分的时候，他说对了。
3. 「真实电影」混淆了「真实」与「事实」，因此只能挖掘出石砾。然而，事实有时也具备一种奇特而诡异的力量，让它内在的真实显得难以置信。
4. 「事实」创造準则，「真实」则能啟发人心。
5.  电影裡还有更深层的真实；诗意的、令人心醉神迷的真实都是存在的。真实是不可思议又难以捉摸的，唯有透过虚构、想像以及安排，才能真正触及。
6. 「真实电影」的电影工作者就像是观光客，在古蹟的断垣残壁之间拍照取景。
7.  观光是一种罪恶，徒步旅行则是美德。
8.  每年春天，总是有许多人驾雪车衝入明尼苏达湖上的融冰溺毙，舆论对新州长施压，希望通过保护法令。曾经是摔角选手及保鏢的新州长，对此有一个睿智的回答：「你不能规范愚昧。」
9.  宣战书於焉下达。
10. 月色黯沉。大地之母不会呼喊，也不会对你开口说话，虽然冰河会出声。不要聆听生命之歌。
11. 我们应该感谢远方的宇宙不懂得微笑。
12. 生活在海洋裡必定犹如炼狱，浩瀚而无情的炼狱，充满永恆且立即的危机。如此炼狱，让某些物种，包括人类，在演化的过程中匍伏逃至一些陆地版块上。在那裡，黑暗的教训持续进行著。

维尔纳·赫尔佐格
明尼苏达，渥克艺术中心
1999年4月30日
 
Minnesota declaration: truth and fact in documentary cinema

“LESSONS OF DARKNESS”

1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.
2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publicly that truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to be honest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court who resents the amount of written law and legal procedures. “For me,” he says, “there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go to jail.” Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.
3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.
4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.
5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.
6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.
7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.
8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can’t legislate stupidity."
9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down.
10. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn’t call, doesn’t speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. And don’t you listen to the Song of Life.
11. We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.
12. Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota April 30, 1999
Werner HERZOG