Les Blank
Les Blank ( born November 27, 1935 in Tampa, Florida, † April 7, 2013 in Berkeley, California ) was an American documentary filmmaker.
Life and work
Les Blank studied English language at Tulane University in New Orleans. Under the impression of the Ingmar Bergman film The Seventh Seal (1957 ), he began training as an actor and screenwriter before he attended the film school at the University of Southern California. My first professional experience was gained in industrial and educational films; Finally, in 1967 he founded the production company, Flower Films.
In 1965 Blank realized a short film about the jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, the more portraits of musicians followed. In 1968, The Blues According to Lightnin ' Hopkins, the nation's attention got him; 1973 Hot Pepper appeared on the zydeco musician Clifton Chenier and 1983 Sprout Wings and Fly over the Country musician Tommy Jarrell. More J'ai été au bal films were about the Cajun culture and Chulas Fronteras about the music scene of the Tex-Mex border country; further a movie about Huey Lewis and the News, which showed the band in the realization of video from Stuck With You. Burden of Dreams, Blanks look behind the scenes of Werner Herzog's disastrous film Fitzcarraldo in the Peruvian jungle, "has become a classic chronicle of an obsession ."
For the polka - film In Heaven There is No Beer 1985 he won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Blank each received the award for his life's work by the American Film Institute and the International Documentary Association; also the Honorary Maverick Award at the Woodstock Film Festival in 2000. He died on 7 April 2013, the consequences of bladder cancer disease.