Les Blank
Les Blank (1935-2013) was an internationally renowned, independent filmmaker, whose poetic work offers intimate, idiosyncratic glimpses into the lives, culture, and music of the passionate people at the periphery of American society. His film topics have included Cajun, Mexican, Polish, Hawaiian, and Serbian-American music and food traditions, Afro-Cuban drummers, Texas blues men, Applachian fiddles, “flower children”, gap-toothed women, and the garlic plant.
Blanks is best known for Burden of Dreams (1982/2024), documenting the chaotic production of fellow director, and friend, Werner Herzog’s 1982 film, Fitzcarraldo in the jungles of South America. Honored with a Criterion DVD edition, and a British Academy Award, Roger Ebert called Burden of Dreams, “...one of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie.”
Another of Blank’s best-loved works is Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (1980), a seminal film featuring culinary pioneer Alice Waters, and the Gilroy Garlic Festival. This film, notorious for its mouthwateringness, was initially shown in “Aromaround” with garlic simultaneously roasted in-theater.
