Apparently so.

The revered German director of Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans directed this 35-minute documentary about the dangers of texting while driving for AT&T's It Can Wait campaign. It features a locally shot segment on Debbie Drewniak of Colchester, who was critically injured after being struck by texting driver Emma Vieira in 2011.

A Silver Palm-winning director making a PSA? Sure, why not? The doc, called "From One Second to the Next," is austerely presented and devastating. You'll see a young Iowa man break down as he describes how he plowed into an Amish family's buggy while texting his wife. Drewniak and her siblings talk about how radically her life has changed since the accident, which put her in a coma and killed her beloved Lab.

With characteristic flair, Herzog told the Associated Press, "What AT&T proposed immediately clicked and connected inside of me. There's a completely new culture out there. I'm not a participant of texting and driving — or texting at all — but I see there's something going on in civilization which is coming with great vehemence at us."

So, if you are a "participant of texting and driving," next time consider this: The guy who dragged a steamship up a mountain and maintained a close friendship with Klaus Kinski thinks you're taking an unacceptable risk.

This week in movies you missed: This horror flick asks: Would you ever deliberately hurt a child? What about a gang of children who were trying to hurt you?

What You Missed

Francis and Beth (Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Vinessa Shaw) are a married couple vacationing in Mexico. They have two kids at home and one seven months along. In a rented boat, they head out to an island known for its carnival festivities.

But the island appears to be deserted except for its children. Radios crackle with a desperate voice speaking a foreign language. The kids just stare at the newcomers, refusing to answer questions.

Then Francis encounters an old man — and watches as a small girl beats him viciously with a stick, and her friends finish him off. Another surviving adult tells the couple what happened in the village. By that time, it's too late for them to think about anything but survival.

***UPDATE BELOW***

Last weekend's Precipice music fest gotraves from many in attendance (including Seven Days' Dan Bolles), butthe local bands' sound was not music to the ears of at least a fewneighbors.

Christine Plunkett, president ofBurlington College, says she received three sets of complaints aboutnoise resonating far from the Precipice site on the school's grounds."We learned a lesson," the educator acknowledges. ButPlunkett still gives the Precipice two thumbs up — way up — and saysthe college is "absolutely open" to hosting other concerts.

A Friday afternoon sound check hadindicated music, playing on four stages on a ridge above Lake Champlain, could not be heard at all on North Avenue, Plunkett recounts. Thebowl shape of the open land west of the college's main buildingapparently prevents sound from carrying to nearby homes, she notes.The president adds that she visited several nearby homes prior to theevent to inform residents about the festival, leaving them with hercellphone number in case of problems.

This week in movies you missed: My search for entertaining summer schlock on Netflix Instant continues. Who could resist a title like this?

What You Missed

In 2007, writer-director-exec producer Jaymes Thompson brought the world this ultra-low-budget camp-stravaganza shot in Tucson, Ariz.

Five gay couples headed to the "biggest gay party weekend of the year" find themselves forced to lodge at a run-down B&B owned by creepily dolled-up Helen (Mari Marks) and her daughter, Luella (Georgia Jean).

Despite a rainbow flag flying in front of the B&B, there are early clues something's amiss. Such as the inn's name, Sahara Salvation. The mincemeat muffins Luella offers to guests. (One contains an earring.) The way Helen introduces Luella as "my very lovely and still single daughter." The fact that each room is stocked with five or so Bibles Sharpied with anti-gay messages. Oh, and the shrine to George W. Bush.

This week in movies you missed: In which I go looking for fun schlock on Netflix Instant — because it's too hot to think — and find something worse: arty schlock.

What You Missed

Elfie Hopkins (Jaime Winstone, daughter of Ray) is not a cannibal hunter. Her title appears to have been added to the movie for U.S. video release, perhaps to hook "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fans.

Elfie is a disaffected young slacker who lives with her dad and hated stepmother in a twee house in the Welsh countryside. She spends her time moping about her mom's death, pretending to be a detective, and fending off the advances of her cute friend, Dylan (Aneurin Barnard), whom she sneeringly calls a "nerd" for checking police records and other stuff that detectives might actually do.

Then a family of cannibals moves in next door.

Is anyone else smitten with this guy? He's not quite a household name, considering that a number of his films, and small parts in them, are pretty forgettable.

But Brian Anthony Wilson's guest turns on "The Wire" are not forgettable. On the HBO series, sadly long over, Wilson had me at "detective." That is, Detective Vernon Holley. (Who comes up with these names?) And I remember his face, if not specific roles, on the "Law and Order" franchise, and spotted him in the more recent Silver Linings Playbook.

Wilson, 53, has played numerous film and TV characters since his 1997 breakout in a movie called The Postman. A big man with a bald head and piercing brown eyes, he seems a natural for tough-guy parts. (Me, I love his freckles.) But, btw, he can sing, too.

Right now, Wilson, a Philadelphia native, is summering in Vermont. That is, by acting in Dorset Theatre Festival's production of The Whipping Man. The show, penned by Matthew Lopez, is lately being produced all over the place, perhaps because it is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. In it, Wilson plays a character named Simon, who is a former slave and a de facto father figure to other characters. In an interesting wrinkle, he is also a Jew, having been "owned" and raised by a Jewish family.

This week in movies you missed: Who are those girls in the glossy photos — not the supermodels, but the other ones? Where do they come from? How old are they? What do they earn? A documentary peers into one dark corner of the modeling industry.

What You Missed

In Siberia, teenagers flock to a modeling casting call. They all dream of a contract and a ticket to Tokyo.

Ashley Arbaugh, a model scout, is searching for young, "fresh," malleable girls to send to Japan. She finds one: an ethereal 13-year-old from a small village named Nadya Vall. The contract promises Nadya two modeling jobs and at least $8000, so her parents, who aren't well off, agree to send her off on her own. 

No one meets Nadya at the Tokyo airport. She speaks no Japanese or English. When she finally makes her way to her housing, she discovers she's already in debt to her employer, who will put her on a plane back to Russia if her waist expands by a single centimeter.

Filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin follow Nadya as she tries to navigate the cold metropolis, then return to Arbaugh — back in the U.S. — who has harsh words for her own profession.

How many Hollywood movies reflect the way you live? If you live outside New York and LA, not many, argues Bill Kauffman in the current issue of Massachusetts-based Orion magazine. In an article called "On Location," Kauffman touts Vermont's Jay Craven as a leading producer of authentically regional, "place-based cinema."

"What if...," Kauffman asks, "a filmmaker who lived far off the beaten path — say, in Vermont — made a movie based on a book by his region’s most acclaimed novelist? And then he made another. And another. And what if these works looked and sounded, glowered and sang, like their state, like sugar houses and mud seasons and hootenannies?"

While some might point out there's more to Vermont than sugar houses, mud seasons and hootenannies, Kauffman makes a cogent case for local filmmaking. Read it here.

Read more about the making of Northern Borders here. And, if the topic interests you, join Craven and Orion for a live webinar discussion on July 16 at 4 p.m. It's free, but you must register here.

 Photo: Bruce Dern in Craven's Northern Borders.

This week in movies you missed: If you found this 2012 thriller randomly on Netflix Instant, you'd probably assume it was a standard vehicle for Jessica Biel. You'd be wrong: The Tall Man isn't standard anything.

What You Missed

One by one, children have been disappearing from the dying Washington mining town of Cold Rock. Eighteen are gone so far, and police have no leads. For the townspeople, the abductor has become a quasi-mythical figure: the "Tall Man."

Biel plays nurse Julia Denning, who staffs Cold Rock's rudimentary health clinic. When a woman comes in with her teenage daughter — pregnant by her mother's boyfriend and about to give birth — Julia does what she can for them. She coaxes the teen's selectively mute sister (Jodelle Ferland) to talk.

Julia does her best for her small child at home, too, sheltering him from the realities of life in Cold Rock. Then, one night, a black-dressed abductor appears on her doorstep.

This week in movies you missed: The director of cult flick Primer returns with an expressionist epic about the bond between human and ... swine?

What You Missed

OK, that's not exactly what Upstream Color is about. It's a tough movie to summarize, though.

Amy Seimetz plays Kris, a professional who is abducted and fed a worm that places her in a suggestible hypnotic state. Her abductor cements his control by instructing her to do odd repetitive tasks, then makes her sign over the equity in her house.

Things get worse from there. Kris ends up in the care of a sound artist/avant-garde composer/pig farmer (Andrew Sensenig) who performs a procedure that gives her back control of her mind and body, but leaves her with a big hole in her memory.

As she rebuilds her life, Kris meets a young man (writer-director Shane Carruth) who appears to have had a similar experience. They become involved while trying to figure out what the hell happened. The audience joins them in this endeavor.