Technical data
- Title: EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL
- Original title: Auch Zwerge Haben Klein Angefangen
- Year: 1969
- Production: Werner Herzog Filmproduktion.
- Country: Federal Republic of Germany
- Direction: Werner Herzog.
- Cast: Helmut Döring, Paul Glauer, Gisela Hertwig, Hertel Minkner.
Description and synopsis
The prestigious and unclassifiable German film director Werner Herzog experienced a peculiar love affair with Lanzarote in his youth, shooting two films on the island before he was thirty years old, one of them almost in its entirety: Even Dwarfs Started Small. Herzog’s experimental nature probably found a certain seductive attraction in the primal beauty of the island. Volcanology is a subject that has always interested the filmmaker and Lanzarote is known as “The Island of Volcanoes” because of its fascinating geology. This is an island of surprising aesthetics, perfect for a director who has stood out for making unusual films.
Even Dwarfs Started Small tells the story of how a strange and isolated reformatory sees a rebellion start among the inmates that kicks off a spiral of violence. Herzog, one of the founders of the so-called New German Cinema along with directors such as Rainer Fassbinder and Wim Wenders, shot the film in black and white, and used decontextualised elements charged with a symbolism that is difficult to decipher. If these characteristics are already somewhat unusual, the fact that it is performed by actors with achondroplasia (dwarfism) further fuels the legend of the strangeness of this film, which is probably one of the few films shot entirely by people with this type of disability.
Herzog, who returned to Lanzarote to give a film course in 2021, also took advantage of his stay on the island at the end of the sixties to finish another film entitled Fata Morgana, including some surreal scenes featuring Heraclio Niz, a local legend who acted as a kind of ambassador for the island and participated in dozens of films shot over several decades.
