Werner Herzog’s Encounters with the Natural World
Featuring the legendary, award-winning director of Ghost Elephants, Encounters at the End of the World, and Grizzly Man.
In conversation with acclaimed PBS NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown.
At the historic Lensic Performing Arts Center, Santa Fe, NM
6 to 7 p.m. Main Event
7-7:45 p.m. VIP Event
No filmmaker captures the beauty and mystery of the natural world like Werner Herzog. And none does it with such marvelous weirdness. A lifelong wanderer, he has followed his curiosity around the globe, telling stories of explorers and dreamers whose encounters with nature are by turns wondrous, surreal, and unsettling. His award-winning film Grizzly Man chronicles the life and violent death of a misguided conservationist who believed he could forge relationships with wild bears. Encounters at the End of the World follows scientists in Antarctica as they plunge into volcanoes and the frigid ocean in an effort to advance their understanding of the earth and its many secrets. Cave of Forgotten Dreams, arguably Herzog’s most poignantly evocative film, takes us on a tour of a cave in France whose walls are covered with exquisite animal paintings that date back 32,000 years—some of our earliest proof that humankind has always been emotionally drawn to the wild.
Throughout all of his work, Herzog has a powerful message: the world and its creatures are unfathomably complex, and our attempts to understand them are both laudable and a fool’s errand. This makes for stories that can be comical one moment then deadly serious the next—the grizzly’s a great companion until it eats you. Told from the perspective of a man who is clearly wonderstruck by life, Herzog’s films are riveting and magical. He is, wrote the late film critic Roger Ebert, “like the storytellers of old, returning from far lands with spellbinding tales.”
We’re honored to welcome Herzog on Sunday, November 8, 2026, at TK:00 at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in Santa Fe. He will discuss his life and films, including his latest, Ghost Elephants, about a biologist in South Africa on a quest to find the ancestors of a massive elephant, the largest ever recorded, that was killed by a big-game hunter in 1955. Do these creatures even exist? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. “The world is full of awe,” Herzog says in his narration. “It’s one moment after the next where you just take a deep breath.”
Jeffrey Brown is the beloved senior correspondent and chief arts correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, public television’s nightly news program viewed by millions. In his thirty-plus years with the program, he has interviewed countless American and international newsmakers and reported from all corners of the globe. As arts correspondent, he has profiled many of the world’s leading writers, musicians, and other artists, including Willie Nelson, Robert Redford, Amy Tan, David Hockney, Dave Chapelle, Kacey Musgraves, Jesmyn Ward, and, yes, Werner Herzog. As senior producer for national affairs for more than a decade, he helped shape the NewsHour’s coverage of the economy, healthcare, social policy, and culture. He is host of the show’s arts and culture segment “Canvas” and has served as host for the monthly book club “Now Read This,” a collaboration with The New York Times. He has won Emmy, Peabody, and Cine Golden Eagle awards, and is author of The News, a collection of poems that explores the many people and events he’s covered as a journalist.