"Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, 'The invariable mark of wisdom is to find the miraculous in the common.' By this definition, Les Blank is one wise filmmaker. His rich body of cinematic work is filled with miracles and not just of sound and image. One can almost smell and taste aspects of his films, from GARLIC IS AS GOOD AS TEN MOTHERS to WERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE; and there is a palpability to his work - a sense of detail and of place - in such movies as BURDEN OF DREAMS.
"Some people (unfortunate viewers!) assume that documentaries are didactic chronicles, usually narrated by an all-knowing and often paternal male voice. Les Blank's documentaries, from HOT PEPPER to IN HEAVEN THERE IS NO BEER?, resist such categorization. They're more often joyful glimpses of an America far from the corporate mainstream. He has been called something of an anthropologist, as he has recorded such a variety of ethnic cultures - from the music of Chicanos in CHULAS FRONTERAS, to the Serbian-American communities of Chicago and California in ZIVELI, to the Cajun and Zydeco musicians of Southwest Louisiana in I WENT TO THE DANCE. But it takes more than an anthropologist to capture Mardi Gras in New Orleans (especially the black community), as Blank does in ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE. It takes a filmmaker.
"Although I consider Les Blank to be a quintessentially American filmmaker, something about his work reminds me of Jean Renoir. Both are drawn to the rituals of daily life - the meals, music and festivals that bind individuals together into communities. The films of both exhibit a sharp or curious eye balanced by an expansive heart. If there's one Les Blank film title that sums this up for me, it's from a 20-minute movies of the late '60s, GOD RESPECTS US WHEN WE WORK, BUT LOVES US WHEN WE DANCE." - Annette Isendorf's Presentation of "The AFI's Maya Deren Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achievement as an Independent Filmmaker" to Les Blank, February 8, 1990, Angelika Film Center, NYC
Les Blank's website: www.lesblank.com
Les Blank's earliest music film focuses on Dizzy Gillespie, the great jazz trumpeter, during a club date in Los Angeles. Dizzy talks about his beginnings and music theories, and blows a lot of hot music on that famous horn.
1965, 16mm, b&w/so, 20m, $75
A time-capsule report on a specific high point of the hippie/counter-culture movement of the long-ago Sixties, GOD RESPECTS US is a finely shot panorama of the action and more meditative moments occurring at the Los Angeles 1967 Easter Sunday Love-In.
1968, 16mm, color/so, 20m, $75
SPEND IT ALL is a "perceptive, lusty lyrical documentary of some true American originals - the bayou people in Cajun country." - Times-Picayune, New Orleans
The Cajuns of Southwest Louisiana still retain the language, camaraderie and old world spirit of their French-speaking Acadian ancestors. The film captures the intense bravado and vitality of their lives.
1971, 16mm, color/so, 40m, $120
A WELL SPENT LIFE looks into the thoughts and music of Mance Lipscomb, 75-year-old philosopher-songster. Centering on Lipscomb - whom Blank described as "the closest thing to a Christ figure I have ever seen" - the film is also a revealing glimpse of a black farming community.
1971, 16mm, color/so, 44m, $130
See description under HOT PEPPER.
1973, 16mm, color/so, 37m, $110
DRY WOOD and HOT PEPPER form a fascinating two-part documentary on the life and music of the French-speaking blacks in southwest Louisiana's Cajun country.
"DRY WOOD features the music of 'Bois Sec' ('Dry Wood') Ardoin, his sons and Canray Fontenot. Theirs is an older, rural style of Cajun music which, in the film, weaves together incidents in the lives of the Fontenot and Ardoin families. The film's highlights include a rollicking country Mardi Gras, work in the rice fields, a 'Mens Only' supper, and a hog-butchering party that takes the hog from kill to sausage.
"HOT PEPPER plunges the viewer deep into the music of Clifton Chenier and its sources in the surroundings of rural and urban Louisiana. The great accordionist mixes rock and blues with his unique version of 'Zydeco' music, a pulsating combination of Cajun French and African undertones. In addition to scenes of Clifton belting it out at sweaty dance halls, the film winds his music through the bayous and byways of the countryside (some of Blank's most stunning photography!) and into the streets and homes of his people." - Michael Goodwin, City Magazine
1973, 16mm, color/so, 54m, $135
Note: DRY WOOD and HOT PEPPER may be rented together for $100.
CHULAS FRONTERAS, considered by Prof. Juan Rodriguez (and many others) as "absolutely the best Chicano documentary I have ever seen," provides a magnificent introduction to the most exciting Norte-o musicians working today: Los Alegres de Teran, Lydia Mendoza, Flaco Jimenez and others. The music and spirit of the people is seen embodied in their strong family life and sheer enjoyment of domestic rituals. At the same time Blank does not overlook the hardships, in particular the Chicano experience of migrating from state to state with the seasons for work in the fields. He makes clear the role the music has in redeeming their lives by giving utterance to collective pain.
Note: Comes with additional feature DEL MERO CORAZON (see description below).
1976, 16mm, color/so, 58m, $135
ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE is an intensive insider's look at Mardi Gras and the myriad musical traditions the annual celebration supports in New Orleans. On one level, it's a fairly shabby Southern city with a touristy, almost tacky overlay. But beneath the overlay is something vital, something intimately acquainted with living and dying, that marketing cannot long disguise or distort. New Orleans has a gut-level mythic quality, a resonance unique among American cities. ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE amplifies that resonance.
1978, 16mm, color/so, 58m, $135
Stars: Leon Garza, Chavela Ortiz, Brown Express, Little Joe and La Familia and more.
DEL MERO CORAZON is a lyrical journey through the heart of Chicano culture, as reflected in the love songs of the Tex-Mex Norte-o music tradition. Love songs are the poetry of daily life - a poetry of passion and death, hurt and humor, pleasures and torn dreams of desire. In the film, these songs travel from intimate family gatherings to community dance halls, from the borderlands to wherever La Raza works, lives, settles down. They are passed along, changed, and turned into new songs - always sung from the heart.
Note: See CHULAS FRONTERAS for video sales information.
1979, 16mm, color/so, 28m, $85
An industrial short made for the world's second-largest poultry producer, CHICKEN REAL incorporates subversive bits of satire in its promotion of the assembly-line approach to mass-manufacturing food. Music recorded in North Carolina, of a local group playing all the chicken songs they knew.
"... It's [Blank's] funniest film, one that works on its own terms as a fascinating documentary on the chicken biz, and also as a humorous comment on itself.
"Surreal images abound - hundreds of chickens clucking toward a feeding belt, thousands of chicks huddled together in a giant breeding room, dead chickens flying across a table, passing through hellish flames on a conveyor, receiving giblet transplants. But the most interesting thing is that Blank evades the issue of chicken-death completely - skipping in an instant from live chickens to dead ones with absolutely no mention that birds are dying. It's the only Blank film in which death is never acknowledged - and as a result death pervades the picture as it does no other. Chicken of incomparable succulence." - Michael Goodwin, Pacific Film Archive
1980, 16mm, color/so, 20m, $50
"'Fight Mouthwash - Eat Garlic' is the call-to-arms of Les Blank's newest exploration of alternative American lifestyles. And why garlic - quite possibly the greatest culinary aid and natural cure-all known to mankind - should have gotten so much bad press in the first place is the curious (and distinctly political) paradox that Blank explores in his latest film. ...
"And what a film it is - Blank's best, I think. And it's absolutely obscene in its obsession with the growing and harvesting of garlic and the preparation, cooking and eating of garlic dishes - everything from whole suckling pigs to garlic soup ....
"As in all of Blank's films, the people interviewed are beautiful, natural and full of zest for life. These garlic-lovers take great pride in their own identity, glorifying it in songs and dance and turning it into constant celebration ...." - Rob Baker, The Soho Weekly News
1980, 16mm, color/so, 51m, $135
A shortened version of the original 51-minute film of the same title.
1980, 16mm, color/so, 30m, $75
In 1979, Les Blank took a brief detour from his filmic path through traditional American music to film German filmmaker Werner Herzog honoring a vow he claims he made to Errol Morris, a Berkeley student, that he (Herzog) would eat his shoe if Morris ever got off his butt and actually made one of the films he was forever talking about. Stung to action, Morris directed Gates of Heaven, a highly acclaimed film about a pet cemetery - and Herzog, true to his word, returned to Berkeley to consume one of his desert boots in front of a large audience at the UC Theatre. The film reveals an obsessive, self-destructive, almost super-human dimension to Herzog that illuminates many of his films; in addition it documents his strongly expressed belief that people must have "the guts" to attempt what they dream of. And Herzog adds comments on the value of cinema and the need for a "new grammar of images." Definitely the strangest of Blank's love letters to food, and a major addition to the small shelf of films on filmmaking.
1980, 16mm, color/so, 20m, $75
BURDEN OF DREAMS is a chilling but finely balanced account of what might ordinarily be considered artistic folly: German filmmaker Werner Herzog's obsession to complete the painfully plagued jungle shooting of Fitzcarraldo. Disaster after disaster befalls Herzog's tale of a penniless, opera-mad dreamer (Klaus Kinski) who risks everything to build a grand opera house in the jungle river port of Iquitos. Blank's film grows into a fascinating (and highly controversial) record of an obsessed genius and his battle to finish his project in the face of plane crashes, torrential rains, attacks by armed, hostile Indians, the loss of several leading actors, and the eruption of a full-fledged border war around him. The obvious irony running through BURDEN OF DREAMS is that creating the movie Fitzcarraldo proved just as dubious and perilous an enterprise as the one on which it was based.
"Remarkable ... one of the most candid, most fascinating portraits ever made of a motion picture director at work. ... There's never been anything else like it." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times
1982, 16mm, color/so, 94m, $225
- Inquire for Availability
Produced and co-directed by Alice Gerrard and Cece Conway. Edited by Maureen Gosling.
"SPROUT WINGS AND FLY is a compassionate, life-affirming, altogether extraordinary document on old-timey Appalachian fiddler Tommy Jarrell. It's a fascinating film on the theme that art, music, dance, food and earthly pleasures help human beings live joyously in the face of certain death. "Jarrell is a fabulous fiddler and ballad singer, and his music is the focus of the film, but Blank's camera and Mike Seeger's tape recorder capture much more than music. ... Most of all, they capture the sweetness and resilience of folkways where death is acknowledged - and held back for a time with shared celebration that may be lost forever to our cowardly Burger King culture.
"SPROUT WINGS AND FLY ... offers fine old-timey music, crazy jive, a fascinating cast of backwoods characters - plus a compelling look at one of the central issues facing a civilization fast losing its sanest ways." - Michael Goodwin, Berkeley Monthly
1983, 16mm, color/so, 30m, $90
A lyrical companion piece to THE BLUES ACCORDIN' TO LIGHTNIN' HOPKINS ... this film recreates Lightnin' Hopkins' decision at the age of eight to stop choppin' cotton and sing for his living. It includes a particularly fine version of "Trouble in Mind."
16mm, color/so, 10m, $30
Produced, directed and photographed by Les Blank. Edited by Maureen Gosling.
IN HEAVEN THERE IS NO BEER? is a joyous romp through the dance, food, music, friendship and even religion of the Polka. The energy and bursting spirit of the polka subculture is rendered with both warmth and a dedication to scholarship in this journey through Polish-American celebration that takes us from New London, Connecticut's "Polkabration" to the International Polka Association's convention, with a stop along the way for a polka mass in Milwaukee.
"The photography and editing, soundtrack and beautifully constructed 'true-to-life' scenes are superb. For some reason or other, I found myself alternately laughing and crying during the film. It is an unbelievably heartwarming movie." - Philip Elwood, San Francisco Examiner
"Mr. Blank also examines the dancers' Polish patriotism and the polka regalia, concluding that they may find a close and authentic sense of community through this form of folk art." - Janet Maslin, The New York Times
1984, 16mm, color/so, 51m, $135
A microcosmic Les Blank film in which Oakland bluesman Sonny Rhodes simultaneously addresses three of the filmmaker's long-standing obsessions: death, cigarette smoking and the nature of the blues.
1985, 16mm, color/so, 6m, $50
The filmmakers interviewed close to 100 gap-toothed women ranging in age from 18 months to 88 years, 40 of whom appear in the film, to find out what makes them tick - their interests, beliefs, lifestyles, and whether or not a space in one's teeth can make a difference. As in Les Blank's GARLIC IS AS GOOD AS TEN MOTHERS, what seems to be a trivial subject forms an arena for the exploration of cross currents of human nature.
"In addition to gap-teeth, which affected each interviewee differently, these women have senses of humor and proportion that make them extraordinarily good company. More or less in passing without half-trying, GAP-TOOTHED WOMEN also becomes a celebration of womanhood." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times
1987, 16mm, color/so, 31m, $90
Produced by Les Blank. Edited by Maureen Gosling.
This film features the culture and music of the Serbian-American communities of Chicago and California. Made in association with Serbian-American anthropologist Andrej Simic and the University of Southern California's Visual Anthropology program, the film focuses on the vital cultural strengths of these immigrants from Yugoslavia, who helped form the backbone of industrial America. Music, dancing, the Orthodox church and other community activities are highlighted.
"Most documentaries that examine ethnic cultures in America are, by nature, dull. Les Blank's ... film about Serbians in America is fun. Much of the credit goes to the Serbians themselves, who, unlike most American ethnic groups, have not only maintained their cultural identity, but have strengthened it here. Blank capitalizes on the sensuous elements of the culture - the music, the dance, the food, the parties - and makes the necessary historical background relevant and interesting. There are ... some marvelous pieces of filmmaking." - LA Weekly
1987, 16mm, color/so, 51m, $135
By Harrod Blank. Produced by Les Blank.
Roland drives a dada art gallery on wheels and attracts more girls than he knows what to do with. Unfortunately, they seldom stick around. Can it be his chicken imitations? His dead animal skulls? His green body make-up? Can a handsome boy who feels like a Martian find happiness with earth girls? And if not, then with who? Or what?
"IN THE LAND OF THE OWL TURDS is a whimsical tale of a handsome, but decidedly eccentric young man's rocky quest for true love. Recommended." - The Los Angeles Times
"A well-crafted fiction about love and sex and the whole damn thing, the picture boasts an eclectic and good sound track and some promising scenes with the younger Blank, who also stars in the evidently semi-autobiographical film." - David Armstrong, San Francisco Examiner
1987, 16mm, color/so, 30m, $90
The definitive film on the history of toe-tapping, foot-stomping music of Southwest French Louisiana. Includes both Cajun and Zydeco greats, featuring Michael Doucet and Beausoleil, Clifton Chenier, Marc and Ann Savoy, D.L. Menard and many others.
1989, 16mm, color/so, 84m, $225
Les Blank marries his passion for spicy downhome food and his admiration for Cajuns and Creoles to create this mouth-watering exploration into cooking and other enthusiasms of French-speaking Louisiana. Features tangy music, Marc Savoy, Paul Prudhomme and other great cooks.
1990, 16mm, color/so, 31m, $90
A warmly amusing look at American tourists on a whirlwind bus tour of Europe. The eclectic soundtrack includes Mozart, Bob Dylan, Sandy Denny, Jonathan Richman and others.
1991, 16mm, color/so, 84m, $225
Portrait of Marc and Ann Savoy, Cajun musicians who are dedicated to the preservation and continuance of Cajun culture. Marc's an irreverent storyteller and accordion maker. His wife Ann is the mother of four and author of Cajun Music: Reflection of a People.
1991, 16mm, color/so, 27m, $80
This aloha-filled portrait of Auntie Irmgard Farden Aluli, one of Hawaii's best loved composers, gently focuses on Hawai'ian women's contributions to the family structure, art, music and dance. An intimate glimpse into the real culture of the islands.
1991, 16mm, color/so, 37m, $110
By Harrod Blank. Partially shot by Les Blank.
Harrod Blank's comic and revealing exploration of Art Cars, personally customized automobiles which reflect the individualistic spirit of their drivers. Traveling across the country in his own wildly decorated VW bug, the filmmaker discovers a memorable cast of real-life characters obsessed with transforming their cars into mobile works of art.
Note: Available as a 64-minute Director's Cut or a 56-minute broadcast version with no objectionable language.
1992, 16mm, color/so, 56m or 64m, $135
Meet Gerry Gaxiola, aka The Maestro, an ex-wage slave who gave up everything to make art for art's sake. What happens when a dedicated husband and father quits his job, adopts the persona of the Western Cowboy, takes on the entire art establishment including Christo and Andy Warhol, and refuses to take money for his art? The answer may surprise you, and just might inspire a whole new generation of aspiring Van Goghs.
1994, 16mm, color/so, 54m, $135
Carlos Santana reveres him. Bill Graham honored him. Katharine Dunham wouldn't let him go home for five years. Dizzy Gillespie, Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee are among those who swear by him. His feats of endurance are legendary among his contemporaries. He's a master of both batá drumming in the sacred tradition of Santer'a, Abaqua and Yezá, and secular Latin jazz and salsa styles. He's been called a Rosetta stone of African culture. Discover this enigmatic Cuban drummer who has been so historically influential in the growth of Latin jazz, pop and fusion in the US since the 1950s.
1995, 16mm, color/so, 30m, $100