Les Blank Movies

This is Les Blank’s earliest music film, focusing on the renown trumpet player, Dizzy Gillespie, who along with Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk,...

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...

Legendary filmmaker Les Blank's toe-tapping film treats us to a portrait of a musical Louisiana couple committed to celebrating and preserving Cajun...

A warmly amusing look at a bus-full of American tourists on a whirlwind tour of Europe. The eclectic soundtrack includes Mozart, Bob Dylan, Sandy...

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

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...

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

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

Following a brief statement by Ry Cooder on his thoughts about performing - and improvising - on stage, this concert film depicts Cooder's 1987 live...

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...

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...

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

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

This creative educational film by Pieter Van Deusen features a variety of string instruments performed by noted musicians such as Shamim Ahmed Kahn....

Conjoined fables are told, one Japanese, the other African, a ghost story colliding with farcical folklore.

This short film features Les Blank (in a rare acting role) and Getachew Abbai. Directed by David Lawrence. This was a student film made at the USC...

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

The Ways of Water was made with the Earth Science Curriculum Project and the Environmental Studies Project of the American Geological Institute. A...

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