Act One Film Society
The Act One Film Society launched in January 2016 as a spin-off subgroup of Chapter One Book Group. At the end of 2023, monthly selections were placed on indefinite hiatus, though the group remains active for discussion of films.
A history of group activity can be viewed here.
January 2026
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) directed by Werner Herzog
Historical Drama
Film #197
Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a fever dream of obsession and ruin, following a doomed Spanish expedition as it drifts down the Amazon in search of the mythical city of El Dorado. When the party splinters and command falls to the iron-willed and unhinged Don Lope de Aguirre, the journey curdles into madness. As jungles close in and supplies dwindle, Aguirre’s hunger for power transforms him into a tyrant god, ruling over a handful of starving men on a river that seems to flow straight into oblivion. Shot amid real peril and chaos, the film’s hallucinatory landscapes and relentless forward motion mirror the expedition’s inexorable collapse.
At once an adventure film and an existential nightmare, Aguirre is a profound meditation on imperial arrogance and the futility of human domination over nature. Klaus Kinski’s iconic performance burns with manic intensity, portraying a man so consumed by his own delusions that he becomes inseparable from them. Herzog’s camera lingers on mist-shrouded mountains, silent waters, and decaying bodies, crafting an atmosphere of eerie detachment and cosmic indifference. Haunting, hypnotic and deeply unsettling, Aguirre, the Wrath of God stands as a landmark of New German Cinema and one of the most uncompromising visions of madness ever put to film.
January 2026
Grizzly Man (1979) directed by Werner Herzog
Documentary
Film #198
Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man is a haunting portrait of Timothy Treadwell, an environmentalist who spent thirteen summers living among the grizzly bears of Alaska, filming himself as both guardian and confidant to the animals he adored. Through hundreds of hours of Treadwell’s self-recorded footage – by turns ecstatic, tender and deeply unstable – the film charts a life driven by a desperate need for communion with the wild. Herzog weaves this material together with interviews and stark narration, framing Treadwell’s idealism against the unforgiving reality of nature, where beauty and brutality coexist without sentiment.
More than a nature documentary, Grizzly Man is a meditation on obsession, performance and the human urge to impose meaning on an indifferent world. Herzog approaches Treadwell with neither mockery nor reverence, instead offering a tragic, compassionate inquiry into a man who sought redemption and purpose in the wilderness. The film’s quiet dread builds inexorably toward its devastating conclusion, leaving viewers to wrestle with questions of hubris, love and the limits of empathy across species. Mesmerizing and unsettling, Grizzly Man stands as one of Herzog’s most profound explorations of where the human soul collides with the raw force of nature.