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Herzog: Facts per se are not so interesting for me. Facts do not illuminate; they create norms. The Manhattan phone directory has 4 million entries which are factually correct, but as a book it doesn’t really illuminate you. I’ve always said we have to look beyond realism, beyond facts. We have to dig into a deeper stratum of truth which is somehow deeply inherent in cinema but which is very hard to find and to create. I’m looking for moments that are somehow illuminating. In some of my films, I hope there are a few moments where you feel almost illuminated, like in a state of ecstasy, stepping out of yourself, beyond yourself and perceiving something which is only, in the case of cinema, possible in collective dreams.
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