{"id":23770,"date":"2024-08-07T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=23770"},"modified":"2024-08-06T17:37:13","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T00:37:13","slug":"the-culinary-ethnography-of-les-blank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-culinary-ethnography-of-les-blank\/","title":{"rendered":"The Culinary Ethnography of Les Blank"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before embarking on the remarkable series of documentaries that earned him international acclaim, the late filmmaker Les Blank (1935-2013) made industrial films and television commercials, many of which focused on food products and the companies that produced them. There were ads for Almond Joy in 1966 and a piece that same year extolling the candy bar\u2019s star ingredient, made for the California Almond Growers Exchange, as well as short films about the Shakey\u2019s Pizza chain and a company that produced honey. Most notably, there was Chicken Real<\/em> (1970), a quirky and funny look at large-scale poultry farming that might as easily be called \u201cChicken Surreal,\u201d following the mass production of one of the world\u2019s most ubiquitous food sources from factory incubation to a county fair barbecue, accompanied by chicken-themed songs and music recorded live in North Carolina\u2019s Blue Ridge mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blank went on to create roughly 40 shorts and features primarily focused on regional and ethnic American subcultures (and some outside the U.S.) that retained their traditions and ways of life, fostered by years of insular, often isolated existence. He is probably most famous for his feature-length documentary Burden of Dreams <\/em>(1982), about the beleaguered production of the Werner Herzog film Fitzcarraldo<\/em> (1982). It won a British Academy award, ranked 14th in Sight and Sound magazine\u2019s list of the greatest documentaries of all time, and was preserved in 1999 by the Academy Film Archive for its historical and artistic importance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As fascinating and worthy as that film is, it would be a shame if that\u2019s all anyone knew about Blank\u2019s impressive body of work over about 40 years, most of them intimate portraits of life in the margins of American society. Avoiding commentary, narration, and any kind of academic analysis, Blank\u2019s style is more poetry than anthropology, a sensual experience far more than an ethnographic study.  Typical of the reserved, unobtrusive artist behind the camera, his fly-on-the-wall approach allows his subjects to reveal themselves on their own terms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNothing needs to be explained,\u201d his friend Herzog said in a filmed supplement for the Criterion Collection<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s the pure joy of life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That joy is most often expressed through the roots music of the communities Blank documented, but he also reveals the social, cultural, and physical environment the music sprang from. His camera often pulls back from the performers to reveal the world around them, placing their music in that broader context. One of the ways Blank enriches this context is through a focus on food. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFood is sensual,\u201d he said in an interview for Folkstreams<\/a>, a documentary screening site.  \u201cIt keeps bodies alive. And people together.\u201d

Through the years, Blank\u2019s films have thoroughly, effortlessly integrated views of the culinary traditions of a specific population with their musical idioms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n