Les Blank Movies

Oakland bluesman Sonny Rhodes sings “Cigarette Blues”: a musical warning that compares cigarette smoking with playing with a loaded gun.

This softball umpire training film was one of Les Blank's early industrial films made in 1962 prior to his independent filmmaking career. He made...

In a mountain village in southwestern China, just south of Tibet, one of the last remaining traditional bearers of the Lisu ethnic group is amid the...

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...

In 1967 Les Blank and Skip Gerson were hired to work in Thailand on a documentary about the B52 Bomber and its use in bombing campaigns over Vietnam.

One of Les Blank's industrial films, which follows a Holly Farms "broiler" chicken from factory incubation to the county fair barbecue pit. A...

A lyrical recreation of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ decision at age eight to stop chopping cotton and start singing for a living. Preserved by...

Lightnin' Hopkins sings about playing cards with Les Blank and Skip Gerson - a card game he won which turned critical to the making of the film "The...

One of Les Blank's student films: a horror film following a young couple.

This film, photographed and edited by Les Blank, produced and directed by Pieter Van Deusen, documents a spontaneously improvised concert by musician...

Les Blank's first student film, made while at USC, starring Gail Blank, Pieter Van Deusen and Les himself. This short pays homage to Ingmar Bergman's...

Home video footage shot by Maureen Gosling during the filming of Les Blank's feature "A Poem is a Naked Person".

80-year-old Julie Lyon, sister of Old Time fiddler Tommy Jarrell, lights up this gem of a film as she spins tales of her Appalachian childhood in...

From Worldcat: Presents new musical sounds and new ways of treating old sounds. Includes examples of chance music, tape music, synthesizer music, and...

A lyrical journey through the heart of Chicano culture as reflected in the love songs of the Tex-Mex Norteña music tradition. Performers...

This short film by Les Blank with Skip Gerson features the charismatic legendary blues icon Lightnin' Hopkins sing a beautiful song about a...

Directed by Terry Nowak. This early film about the Southern California Renaissance Fair, with Les Blank as cameraman, is shot in sensuous detail on a...

The long-awaited sequel to Sprout Wings and Fly is a gentle celebration of mountain living, a once-thriving American way of life.

A film created by Les Blank and Maureen Gosling from footage that was cut from the documentary "Always for Pleasure" (1978) about Mardi Gras in New...

An examination of the artistic and historical roots of today's tattoo explosion.