Direction: Les Blank

Direction Les Blank

Cast Lightnin' Hopkins

Synopsis A portrait of the great Texas bluesman, 'Lightnin' Hopkins. The film includes interviews and a performance by Hopkins.

Direction Les Blank

Synopsis "Chulas Fronteras" is a documentary about the music of the Mexican community on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border, particularly of migrant farmers. It includes material about the roots of...

Direction Les Blank · Skip Gerson

Cast Alfred Franklin · Hattie Franklin · Elnora Lipscomb · Mance Lipscomb

Synopsis Mance Lipscomb, born in 1895, a Black Texas sharecropper, guitarist, and singer, was recorded by Arhoolie Records in 1960. About ten years later, a film crew visits to listen to...

Direction Les Blank

Cast Werner Herzog · Klaus Kinski · Claudia Cardinale · Jason Robards

Synopsis A feature-length documentary about the messianic German director Werner Herzog struggling against desperate odds in the Amazon basin to make his epic feature, Fitzcarraldo.

Direction Les Blank

Cast Antzonini Del Puerto · Kathleen Bendel · Harrod Blank · Mary T. Brown

Synopsis A documentary on the history of garlic. Blank interviews chefs, garlic lovers, and historians about the their love of the 'stinking rose.'

Direction Les Blank

Synopsis A look at the spirit of New Orleans. First a funeral: Allen Toussaint explains that you arrive slow and cut up afterwards. Then it's food, with a lesson in eating...

Direction Les Blank

Cast Leon Russell · Eric Andersen · Malissa Bates · David Briggs

Synopsis This film was not officially released in 1974 and shown only at non-profit institutions with Les Blank appearing in person. After Les Blank's death in 2013, Les'son Harrod Blank and...

Direction Les Blank

Cast Werner Herzog

Synopsis A film exactly described by its title. German film director Herzog had made a bet with fledgling director Errol Morris that, if Morris made a film, Herzog would eat his...

Direction Les Blank

Synopsis A portrait of black Creole life in the Louisiana Delta, accompanied by the hot sounds of Zydeco music.

Direction Les Blank

Cast Lightnin' Hopkins

Synopsis Hopkins made up this song and performed it for Les Blank after deciding to make the documentary The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins.

Direction Les Blank

Cast Clifton Chenier

Synopsis Documentary about noted Zydeco artist Clifton Chenier. Based out of New Orleans, Chenier was the self-crowned "King" of Zydeco (a New Orleans musical hybrid containing elements of blues, folk and...

Direction Les Blank · Maureen Gosling

Direction Les Blank

Cast Carrie Adell · Catherine Anderson · Natacha Aubier · Miranda Bergman

Direction Les Blank

Synopsis Using music of the genre, ashort look at Tex-Mex music and how it expresses love found and love lost and how it comes straight from the heart.

Direction Les Blank

Cast Dizzy Gillespie

Synopsis Recorded at a time when Diz was fronting his fabled post-war big band featuring jazz greats such as pianist John Lewis, vibraphonist Milt Jackson or bassist Ray Brown, this concert...

Direction Les Blank · Gina Leibrecht

Cast Richard Leacock · Valerie Lalonde

Synopsis In the year 2000, Les Blank, along with co-filmmaker Gina Leibrecht, visited Richard Leacock (1921-2011) at his farm in Normandy, France and recorded conversations with him about his life, his...

Direction Les Blank

Cast Tommy Jarrell

Synopsis The long-awaited sequel to Sprout Wings and Fly (Les Blank’s first film about this homegrown Appalachian fiddler and raconteur) is a gentle celebration of mountain living, a once-thriving American way...

Direction Les Blank

Synopsis This documentary from Les Blank follows the indomitable Gerald "The Maestro" Gaxiola, who turned to a life of prolific art making after years as an aircraft mechanic, traveling salesman, and...

Direction Les Blank · Chris Strachwitz

Direction Les Blank · Skip Gerson

Cast Lightnin' Hopkins

Synopsis A lyrical recreation of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ decision at age eight to stop chopping cotton and start singing for a living. Folklorist/Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax called Blank’s stunning and elegiac short on...