GHOST ELEPHANTS Luminaries

Screening to be followed by a conversation with director Werner Herzog.

In GHOST ELEPHANTS, Werner Herzog embarks on an atmospheric journey into the highland plateaus of Angola, accompanying Dr. Steve Boyes, National Geographic Fellow, explorer and conservationist, on a quest to document the existence of “ghost elephants” — the last survivors of a vanishing lineage of African elephants possibly descended from the Smithsonian’s legendary Fénykövi specimen. First, Herzog travels to Namibia, where San bush trackers demonstrate ancestral methods of reading land and tracking wildlife that stand in sharp contrast to the modern urgency of Boyes’ quest. Then in Angola, the expedition begins in earnest as DNA samples, elusive silhouettes and possible breakthroughs bring the legendary pachyderms within reach. Herzog’s narration — at once reverent, lyrical and wry — captures not just the physical landscape but also the intangible pull of myth and memory. Though the hunt is real, Herzog remains cinema’s most poetic existentialist, less interested in certainty than in the space between belief and truth, and as with GRIZZLY MAN, INTO THE INFERNO and NOMAD, he returns to a central theme: the human hunger for connection with the unknowable. Part nature detective documentary, part fever dream, this is Herzog in his elemental mode — philosopher, provocateur and pilgrim — guiding us toward the edge of knowledge and asking, as always, what lies beyond. –Abbie Algar