In a town that has famously cultivated more than its share of artists, geniuses and eccentrics, Les Blank was a triple threat. Perhaps the most accomplished filmmaker Berkeley has ever produced, Blank (1935-2013) was celebrated far beyond his adopted city as a brilliant auteur who affectionately documented the quirks and oddities of American regionalism.
Les Blank: A Life Well Spent, BAMPFA, 2155 Center St., Berkeley. June 7-July 27. (510) 642-0808.
For the next seven weeks, this chronicler of the cultural margins will become the center of attention at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), which is mounting a Blank retrospective that will showcase new restorations of his eclectic oeuvre.
There have been countless screenings of Blank’s work at BAMPFA over the years, including at least once per year during the museum’s inaugural decade. But this latest film series is distinguished by a packed roster of nearly a dozen in-person guests from Blank’s extended circle of friends and collaborators. Many of these guests are members of Berkeley’s vibrant arts community, including his longtime editor Maureen Gosling — a celebrated filmmaker in her own right whose latest film, The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane, screens at BAMPFA on June 26.
Gosling will appear at all but one of the 10 programs in Les Blank: A Life Well Spent, a retrospective that begins on Friday, June 7, with a program of three short films entitled The Early Years.
Gosling will be joined on Friday and Saturday nights by Skip Gerson, Blank’s indefatigable producer and occasional co-director, and the director’s son Harrod Blank, a part-time Berkeley resident who has tirelessly championed the preservation of his father’s work over the past three decades. Harrod Blank will reappear throughout the series to share insight into the meticulous restoration projects he spearheaded.
Like so many other artists of the counterculture movement, Blank moved to Berkeley in the 1960s, leaving behind a budding career in industrial filmmaking to blaze his own trail as an independent documentarian.
Many of his early films explore the nooks and crannies of Berkeley’s vibrant cultural landscape, most notably Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers, a 51-minute documentary released in 1980 about the garlic enthusiasts of the city’s burgeoning culinary scene. The film features a young Alice Waters, who was becoming an international celebrity with the success of Chez Panisse.
Waters would go on to play a pivotal role in another of Blank’s documentaries around that time as the chef who prepares the eponymous footwear in Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Both films play at BAMPFA on Saturday, June 22, followed by a panel discussion with Gosling, Bay Area film impresario Gary Meyer and noted local garlic enthusiast L. John Harris.
Although Blank is remembered as a quintessential Berkeley filmmaker, he never lost the Southern drawl of his Florida upbringing, and many of his best-known films illuminate the rich musical and culinary traditions of the American South.
Along with Gosling and their mutual friend Chris Strachwitz, Blank co-directed I Went to the Dance (J’ai été au bal), a documentary considered the definitive onscreen treatment of Cajun and zydeco music. It plays at BAMPFA on Saturday, June 28, alongside the short film Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking, with Gosling in attendance to share her recollections of shooting both films with Blank in southwest Louisiana.
Another of Blank’s Louisiana-set films, Always for Pleasure, which captures the raucous energy of New Orleans funeral traditions, screens on Thursday, July 4, with Gosling, Harrod Blank, Afro-Latin jazz legend John Santos and Blank’s longtime producer Chris Simon in attendance.
On multiple occasions, Blank’s artistic curiosity carried him even further south, starting with Chulas Fronteras, an indispensable documentary about the Norteño musicians of the Texas-Mexico border region. That film screens on Saturday, July 13, with Gosling and Harrod Blank in attendance, alongside Juan Antonio Cuéllar of the Arhoolie Foundation.
But perhaps Blank’s wildest adventure of all was his journey deep into the Peruvian jungle with the maverick German filmmaker Werner Herzog for Burden of Dreams, a documentary he co-directed with Gosling about the making of Herzog’s notorious epic Fitzcarraldo. As the Sancho Panza to Herzog’s Don Quixote, Blank gamely captured the financial, ecological and psychological travails that plagued this famously troubled production, which included raids by the local Indigenous population, among other catastrophes. The result is a riotous “making of” documentary unlike any other, which audiences can enjoy in a gorgeous high-definition (4K) version at BAMPFA on Saturday, July 27. Anthony Matt, the archivist responsible for its restoration, will be on hand to discuss it alongside Maureen Gosling and Harrod Blank.
“Les Blank’s extraordinary films speak for themselves, but on this occasion, we’re honored to have so many of his friends, family, and professional colleagues join us to speak about them — honoring the legacy of a truly great artist widely recognized for his contribution to film history,” said Susan Oxtoby, BAMPFA’s director of film and senior film curator, who curated Les Blank: A Life Well Spent.
“Les was a longtime friend of the Pacific Film Archive and a frequent attendee at many of our screenings throughout his life in Berkeley. It’s truly a pleasure to pay tribute to him with a retrospective that will reintroduce his body of work to our audiences, in many cases with beautiful new restorations.”
