Les Blank Movies
A theater student at Tulane University and a communications major at U.S.C.-Los Angeles, Les Blank became a professional filmmaker at the age of 29, when he co-directed the documentary featurette Dizzy Gillespie. Blank has since articulated his fascination with music, food, and ethnic culture in a series of offbeat full-length documentaries, bearing such titles as Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (1979) and In Heaven There Is No Beer? (1984). After completing 1981's Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Blank followed Herzog to South America. It was here that Blank assembled his most famous film, Burden of Dreams (1982), a behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. Making a rare foray into television in 1983, Blank directed the free-wheeling adaptation of Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad. The subject of numerous major museum retrospectives, Les Blank has been honored with the Maya Deren Life Achievement Award. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1965
Les Blank directs this program exploring the knowledge, roots and talents of Dizzy Gillespie. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1967
Lightnin' Hopkins tells his own story of love for his music. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1968
Intended as a companion for "The Blues According to Lightnin' Hopkins," this program explores the pivotal time when Hopkins determined he would become a musician. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1968
The directorial debut of young Chinese director Shu Shuen, The Arch is the story of an 18th-century army captain and a lonesome young widow who meet when they reach for a cricket and their fingers touch. The woman is a schoolteacher, well respected by the village to the point that the town has commissioned an arch in honor of her chastity. The captain and the widow's daughter meet, fall in love and marry, leaving the town to use money granted by the Emperor to build the arch in honor of the now-alone virtuous widow. This feature appeared at the 1968 San Francisco Film Festival where the touching love story was well received. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lisa Lu, Roy Chiao Hung, (more)
- 1970
- R
This documentary video gives information about the automated chicken-growing industry in today's business world. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1971
In the tradition of his past and future up-close celebrity documentaries, Les Blank served up 1981's Mance Lipscomb--A Well-Spent Life. The subject is Texas blues artist Mance Lipscomb, seen at work and in repose. A lifelong sharecropper and tenant farmer, Lipscomb was 65 when he made his first record. His versatility as a singer, composer, guitarist and violinist bordered on the uncanny, and his influence would continue to be felt even into the highly streamlined country-blues market of the 1990s. Director Blank makes excellent use of the materials at hand (there is comparatively little of Lipscomb on film), and the result is a rich, fully fleshed out life study of one of the Southwest's finest "songsters." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1971
This documentary covers the life and career of this great blues guitarist. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1973
Filmmaker Les Blank has made a name for himself in the world of documentary filmmaking with his "slice of life" stories. One of his favorite subjects is the Cajun culture of his home state of Louisiana. This documentary is such a film, featuring some of the great figures in Cajun music. The documentary showcases the talents and cultural heritage of legendary musician Bois Sec Ardoin, whose French name means "dry wood" in English. Also presented is a look at another Cajun giant, Canray Fontenot. The joie de vivre of Cajun culture shines through the dance tunes, and the accompanying food and laughter that have made this lifestyle famous. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide
- 1978
Les Blank directed this documentary on Chicano culture in America as it is expressed through music. Focusing primarily on the Nortena sounds of the Tex-Mex border towns, Del Mero Corazon looks at how Hispanic-American culture finds a way to thrive, regardless of its environment, through the music passed from generation to generation, featuring performances and interviews from Little Joe and La Familia, Leo Garza, Chavela Ortiz and Brown Express. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1978
Always for Pleasure is a plotless cinematic celebration of the Mardi Gras. Director Les Blank concentrates less on the parades and such that the tourists get to see, preferring to dwell on the sensual pleasures of the festival. There's music aplenty, modern rock blending effortlessly with jazz and Cajun tunes. Blank has an errant eye for the bizarre and beautiful, and offers us generous portions of both. The only drawback to Always for Pleasure is that's all over in a mere 58 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Professor Longhair, Kid Thomas Valentine, (more)
- 1979
Director Jean-Pierre Gorin follows up a news story in this interesting documentary on twin girls, ten years old, who speak to each other in their own language. The girls are shown speaking to each other here, and Gorin has sessions with their therapists, their family, and the specialists who work with the twins. This instance of a language created out of whole cloth is certainly unusual if not unique. The twins' grandmother speaks only German, and their mother speaks both English and German, yet it is postulated that since the girls grew up hearing a variety of languages as their parents moved from place to place, they may have inadvertently been stimulated them to create their own language. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- 1980
While he was struggling to complete his first feature-length film, documentarian Errol Morris was discussing his problems with his friend and mentor, the acclaimed German director Werner Herzog. In a moment of frustration, Herzog blurted out that if Morris ever actually finished the movie he kept talking about, he'd eat his shoe. In 1977, Morris finally completed his feature, Gates of Heaven, and he contacted Herzog to tell him that after several well received screenings at film festivals, the premier showing had been scheduled. Herzog, a man of his word, flew to the United States and cooked his shoe, eating it on-stage at the screening. Les Blank, a good friend of both filmmakers, captured the event on film for posterity, and Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe offers a witty look at how to cook a shoe, Herzog's history of keeping unusual promises, his views on the relationship between cuisine and cinema, and the movie by Morris that made the event possible. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1980
That's the title, all right; we're not making it up. Filmmaker Les Blank, whose previous documentaries have been sometimes humorous, sometimes dead-serious studies in obsession, here investigates the topic of garlic. You will be amazed at the hundreds of uses to which that pungent herb can be put. And, for you devotees of vampire stories and asafetida bags, you'll be given a brief rundown of the ages-old "garlic mystique". It's not for nothing that Les Blank was the 1990 recipient of the award named after avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
Tommy Jarrel brings to life the people and atmosphere of North Carolina as he tells tales and fiddles his time away. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1982
This documentary includes an interview with German filmmaker, Werner Herzog. ~ All Movie Guide
Documentarian Les Blank, who filmed Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, trained his cameras on Herzog again, as the eccentric German filmmaker made his epic, Fitzcarraldo, in the Amazon rainforest of Peru. Herzog's production is in trouble right from the start. He begins filming with Jason Robards playing the title role, and Mick Jagger playing Fitzcarraldo's sidekick, Wilbur. With 40 percent of the film shot, Robards becomes ill and goes back to the states, where his doctor will not let him return. Because of the delay, Jagger, with album and tour commitments, is forced to quit the production. Thinking no one can fill the rock star's shoes, Herzog jettisons Jagger's role. He eventually casts his frequent collaborator Klaus Kinski as Fitzcarraldo and begins shooting again. Violent tribal disputes and unpredictable weather hinder the shoot, but the biggest obstacle is Herzog's own quixotic and dangerous determination to film one antique boat smashing down the Amazonian rapids, and the dragging of an identical boat over a mountain from one river to another. Blank interviews members of the cast and crew, including the impoverished Indian extras, and captures the troubles of the seemingly cursed production, but his interviews with Herzog are the focal point of the film. "If I abandon this project," Herzog explains at one point, "I would be a man without dreams, and I never want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project." Herzog later made his own documentary about Kinski, My Best Fiend, which adds to the lore of this infamously difficult shoot. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, (more)
