Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin

Herzog's personal documentary exploring his friendship with Bruce Chatwin. Chatwin who passed in the early 90sfrom AIDS complication was known for his travelogs. Notably his heavily-published and translated travels to South America, Australia and Africa, Chatwin had been admirer of Herzog's films and had seen these films as cinema in it's "purest form".

This particular documentary focused on Chatwin's life divided into chapters. It looks into what inspired his interests into what is "nomadic" or the idea of "walking". The film is shot within the landscape where Chatwin found that inspiration.

Nowadays, within some intellectual circles, it seemed rather critical when scholars or intellectuals (especially white European males) go into places where it is people of color. For some, it echoes colonialism, or seen as "neo-colonialist".

In some ways, this film's intentions become questionable: is it still glorifying white male travels to exotic places? Or is just a humble tribute to Chatwin's travelogs.

In one of its chapters Herzog stumbled upon the idea with Chatwin's interests with Australian Aboriginal people's idea of landscape. Herzog's interviews with Aboriginals who safe-guard research material on Aboriginal thought, looking one of Chatwin's books on travels with Aboriginal shamans.

This film with it's rather questionable intentions, it still very interesting with its location shots in Latin America and Africa. But it can also be seen as a time capsule on what the last of the last internationally-known white male interest with the "exotic" or "otherness" (a world that had no internet or social media and now social distancing).