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Hats off to Herzog at Paris fest

30 minutes ago

PARIS, France (AFP) German arthouse director Werner Herzog, celebrated for portraying the extraordinary heroes of "Aguirre" or "Fitzcarraldo", is paid a rare homage in Paris on Wednesday with a retrospective featuring his entire film career.

"People think that I'm returning, but I've never been away," the 66-year-old film-maker told AFP. "The eyes were somewhere else, which is fine."

Herzog, whose first film dates back to the early 1960s, has just completed a remake of Abel Ferrara's 1992 film "Bad Lieutenant," starring Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage.

Since then he has made 55 films, all of them shown at Paris' Pompidou Centre between December 10 and March 2.

This week in Los Angeles, Herzog picked up the International Documentary Association's prestigious 2008 Career Achievement Award, a tribute to his work in the documentary field as well as in narrative, the latest being "Encounters at the End of the World."

The 2007 documentary shot in Antarctica opens the Paris fest.

Commenting on "Bad Lieutenant", which also stars Eva Mendes, Herzog, who lives in Los Angeles, said "it's a film I hope will come as a surprise. I'm doing things I haven't done before.... I did change the screenplay a lot, I invented new scenes, dialogues."

The movie was shot in Katrina-hit New Orleans "where not only there was a collapse of parts of the city, but also a collapse of morality," he said.