Les Blank: Director,
Producer, Cinematographer
| Bio | In Les Blank's Own Words | Filmography | Article from City Pages |
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Les Blank is a prize-winning independent filmmaker, best known for a series of poetic films that led Time Magazine critic Jay Cocks to write, "I can't believe that anyone interested in movies or America...could watch Blank's work without feeling they'd been granted a casual, soft-spoken revelation." John Rockwell, writing in The New York Times, adds, "Blank is a documentarian of folk cultures who transforms anthropology into art." And Vincent Canby, also in The Times, declared that Blank "is a master of movies about the American idiom... one of our most original filmmakers." Born in 1935 in Tampa, Florida, Les Blank attended Tulane University in New Orleans, where he received a B.A. in English literature and an M.F.A. in theatre. In 1967, after two years in the Ph.D. film program at the University of Southern California, and five years of freelancing in Los Angeles, he began his first independent films, on Texas blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins (The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins ) and the newly forming sub-culture known as flower children, ( God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance. ) To finance these and other of his own films, he continued to make industrial and promotional films for such organizations as Holly Farms Poultry, Archway Cookies and the National Wildlife Federation until 1972.
Major retrospectives of Les Blank's films have been mounted in Los Angeles at FILMEX in 1977; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1978 and 1984; New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1979; the National Film Theatre, London, 1982; Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City, 1984; the Cinematheque Francais, Paris, 1986; the Independent Film Week, Augsburg,Germany, 1990 and the Leipzig Film Festival, 1995 and the Sofia Music Film Festival, Bulgaria, 1998. Feature articles on Blank have appeared in American Film, Film Quarterly, Take One, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Image Magazine, Mother Jones, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Premiere, Downbeat and Video Review. In 1984 Blank co-edited the Burden of Dreams book, which included journals written during the making of Burden of Dreams by him, sound recordist-editor Maureen Gosling and Werner Herzog, plus an article by legendary journalist Michael Goodwin. In 1986, National Public Radio aired a half-hour special on Les Blank's work and in 1991 CNN aired a special on him worldwide. Among Blank's numerous awards are the British Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, 1982, (Burden of Dreams); the Golden Gate Award "Best of Festival", San Francisco Film Festival, 1982 (Burden of Dreams); Grand Prize, Melbourne Film Festival,1985 (In Heaven There Is No Beer?); Special Jury Award U.S. (Sundance) Film Festival, 1985 (In Heaven There Is No Beer?); Grand Award, Houston Film Festival, 1983 (Burden of Dreams); Golden Hugo, Chicago Film Festival, 1969 (The Blues Accordin' To Lightnin' Hopkins); Blue Ribbon, American Film and Video Festival (Dry Wood, Hot Pepper, Always For Pleasure, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers, Burden of Dreams, Gap-Toothed Women, The Best of Blank, J'ai Ete Au Bal, Yum,Yum,Yum! and Marc and Ann.) "Best of Festival", Sinking Creek (Nashville) 1996 (The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists).
In August 2007, documentary filmmaker Les Blank received the Edward MacDowell Medal.
In 1989-1990 Blank was the distinguished filmmaker-in-residence
at San Diego State University and in 1991, adjunct assistant professor in
film at the University of California, Berkeley.
He was also the Louis B. Mayer
filmmaker-in-residence at Dartmouth College and a directing fellow at the
Sundance Institute in Utah (both in 1984).
His work has been supported by
The National Endowment For the Arts, The American Film Institute, The National
Endowment For the Humanities, The Ford Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation,
PBS and the BBC.
Between 1973 and 1994 Blank toured extensively with the
sponsorship of the United States Information Agency, screening his films
and discussing them with audiences throughout Latin America, China, England,
Spain, Germany, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Egypt.
In 1993 Garlic Is As Good As Good Mothers, and in 2004 Chulas Fronteras were selected by the U.S. Library Of Congress for inclusion in The National Film Registry.
Les joins Fred Wiseman and the Maysles brothers as the only documentatians to be honored with two films on the list.
Recent Work:
All In This Tea: Flower Films presents All In This Tea, a feature documentary film by directors Les Blank and Gina Leibrecht that follows the world-renowned American tea importer, David Lee Hoffman, to some of the most remote regions of China in search of the finest handmade teas in the world. Not since Robert Fortune clandestinely made his way through the tea growing districts of China in 1843 to steal plants and seeds for the British Empire has a westerner attempted to gain access to the hidden world of tea, where farmers have been making it for generations. As the Chinese open their doors to the global marketplace, Hoffman opens their eyes to their own ancient tradition that links them, and all of us, to the distant past, while introducing the west to one of China’s cultural gems—the artistry and exquisite taste of fine, handmade tea. In addition to Les's Tea film page on his site here, additional information is also available at the film's web site: http://www.AllInThisTea.com, along with a downloadable PDF Press Kit on the Tea Film's Press Kit web page. Work In Progress:
Butch Anthony (working title): In Butch Anthony (working title) Les Blank brings us the life and work of Butch Anthony, a self-taught artist from the small southeastern Alabama town of Seale. Butch is a rare individual with a unique ability to see the potential in objects that others take for granted. He is now considered one of the top naïve artists in Alabama, and, with his works shown in museums around the country, is becoming a national treasure. Blank's camera follows Butch to various folk art festivals around the South, and visits the friends and artists who inspired him to create art. Blank also observes Butch's life in Alabama's rural landscape. From 'coon hunting to calling up alligators and digging up fossils, Butch Anthony shows us a South not known to many.
The Ledger-Enquirer, Butch Anthony, Museum of Wonder
Utitled: An untitled digital video on Richard "Ricky" Leacock, documentary film pioneer, born in 1920, and having the time of his life in Normandy, France, where he is happily at work creating DVD's that will contain his memoires, photos, tales, and if we're lucky, some recipes of some of the finest meals I've ever had.
In Waiting: An Untitled Video on Garrison Keillor; Carnival Is The Answer, (on calypso, costuming and steel drum traditions of Carnival in Trinidad, and Trinidadian Carnival in Brooklyn) and Green Warriors: Desperate Measures in Desperate Times (on radical environmentalism, deep ecology and Earth First!
Pinocchio started it all for me, in 1940, when I was 4 years old. It happened at
the Tampa Theater, one of the grand old depression-era movie palaces thankfully
preserved still today, with all of its ornate and excessive decor, in Tampa, Florida.
(It was built by the same wizard who created the fabulous Fox Theater in Atlanta
and another great one, also still functioning, in Miami.) It has twinkling stars in
the ceiling and clouds that float by. Plus lots of bare-breasted women with long
flowing tresses seemingly everywhere I looked. One held the water fountain out
for me to drink from. Others waved huge candlelabra of light and were
strategically situated throughout the wondrous and mysterious, darkened stucco
caverns. For a breast-fed kid of four it was most stimulating. There was no question of
my willingness to suspend disbelief. And suspend it I did. I was instantly sucked into
the cartoon from the first frame and I’m not sure I’ve ever completely returned.
From City Pages by Phil Anderson In Heaven There Is No Beer? The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists It's in the air these days like a bad rumor or a language virus. It’s a term long since abused and a concept growing ever more vague. It’s "in-de-pend-ent," and whatever the Oscar-watchers think it is, it mostly isn’t. In the best sense of the word, "independent" means no allegiances except to one’s own muse, and if ever there was a role model for the genuine idea, it’s Les Blank. Ironically, this native Floridian is coming to town this Friday to headline the Northern Lights Film Festival, a weekend of local independent films. He has a long history as a visitor in the area, however, and he makes a great filmmakers’ figurehead. For Blank, who’s been making his own kind of movies since the Coens were in grade school, it’s the idea of "culture" as coming from the "folk" (or at least the defiant eccentric) that gets him going in general. He’s devoted films to rural blues artists (Mance Lipscomb, Lightnin’ Hopkins) and people of various ethnicities (Hispanic, Cajun, Appalachian), as well as to garlic and gap-toothed women. His investigations of his pal Werner Herzog (especially Burden of Dreams, about Herzog’s foolishness in making Fitzcarraldo in the Amazon) remain a rare study of cinematic mania. Blank’s newest film, premiering locally this weekend, is The Maestro: King of the Cowboy Artists. It’s about Gerry Gaxiola, whose art is equal parts posing as an artist and making actual works. The "cowboy" part is misleading since the Maestro doesn’t always paint Western stuff; he’s actually a halfway-postmodernist performance goof who used to be a printing salesman and champion bodybuilder. Gaxiola has a gap-toothed smile, buckets of energy and charm, and a wardrobe of outlandish cowboy gear he mostly made himself. He can also paint like everyone from Odilon Redon to the Rev. Howard Finster and Thomas Hart Benton, passably well, and he refuses to sell his work. This makes him more interesting than his wardrobe or his limited songwriting skills, and Blank wisely lets us understand this only gradually. As a documentary filmmaker, Blank follows no particular "-ism." He doesn’t appear on camera but you can hear his offscreen voice (or collaborator Maureen Gosling’s) asking a question here and there. He occasionally throws in hand-lettered text explanations or subtitles; they look like garage-sale advertisements. His tone can seem awestruck or even sentimental, but he’s not afraid to ask the hard question or even distrust his own subjects. More importantly, Blank structures his movies as tight little mosaics: Each follows pretty much the same pattern of early action, which is explained by snatches of conversation or seemingly casual interviews, then builds to a fuller and deeper picture of the issue by film’s end. In Maestro, Gaxiola finally comes off as someone who, beyond his self-aggrandizing bluster, has a real history worth listening to. Blank’s familiarity in these parts stems from visits to the Walker and the U Film Society beginning in the late 1970s. As he did at other places, the filmmaker would quietly show up and cook some red beans and rice, or fry some garlic, just outside the auditorium to aromatize the cinematic experience. Once, on a joint visit with Herzog, someone let a chicken loose on the stage from which they were speaking; it all seemed perfectly natural somehow. It also seemed natural, during these visits, for someone to point out that polka could be as fit a Les Blank subject as garlic, conjunto, or blues. A former U Film staffer pushed for making what became In Heaven There Is No Beer?, though I also mentioned the idea to Blank once in 1977, while on a bus in Colorado. (Remember, Les?) The point here is not to take credit for inspiration, but to see how open and accessible this true "independent" is. What Blank eventually did with polka in his 1984 film was both more and less than what it looks like on paper: He follows dancers at a Connecticut "polka-bration," checks in on a polka mass, and interviews musicians (some of them Minnesotan) about their compositional and cultural nuances (two trumpets or one? concertina or accordion?) What he doesn’t do as in all his films is deal with the other side of ethnic identity, the divisions of politics. What defines "us" also identifies others as "them," but Blank, as the unaffiliated observer, is more interested in how differences can bring people together.
 Drop us a line 10 June 2008 |
Blank's first independent films began a
series of intimate glimpses into the lives and music of passionate people
who live at the periphery of American society-- a series that grew to include
rural Louisiana French musicians and cooks (
In 1990, Les Blank received the American
Film Institute's Maya Deren Award for outstanding lifetime achievement as
an independent filmmaker.