Walter Saxer
Walter Saxer is a Swiss Film Producer who began his film career in the late 60’s when he met the young German director Werner Herzog. With no prior experience, Saxer helped with the production of Herzog’s second feature Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) and became enraptured by the challenge of visualising the “impossible”. He moved to Germany where he quickly became acquainted with artists who were part of the German New Cinema wave including Herbert Achternbusch, Reiner Fassbinder and of course Werner Herzog, with whom he collaborated for most of his career. Saxer eventually took a leading role in the production of iconic films like Aguirre The Wrath Of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). It was during the making of Fitzcarraldo that he got to know the penal colony “Sepa Nuestro Señor de los Milagros” – a mandatory checkpoint before traveling to the Camisea location in Central Peru, where the steamboat of Fitzcarraldo was hauled over the mountain. After completion of the film Saxer returned to the Amazon to document the surreal place that had captured his heart and imagination. In the mid 90’s, he decided to make the Peruvian Amazon his home and today lives in the city of Iquitos where he manages a small hotel “La Casa Fitzcarraldo ” hidden in a luscious garden – a product of his relentless fight against the ongoing deforestation that is destroying the jungles.
Filmography
Director: Sepa: Nuestro Señor de los milagros (1986)
Production credits (selected): Going Kinski (2011), Punch (1994), Scream of Stone (1991), Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990), Bride of the Orient (1989), Liebe ist stärker als der Tod (1988), Cobra Verde (1987), Fitzcarraldo (1982), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
