Highly acclaimed, maverick auteur of off-beat documentaries ranging from "Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers" (1980, a cultural-folk history of the magic herb), to "In Heaven There Is no Beer?" (1984, on Polish polka dancing), to "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe" (1980, the result of the eponymous German director's losing a bet with his former assistant, Errol Morris).
Blank's best known work is the feature-length "Burden of Dreams" (1982), an extraordinary account of the production of Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" (1982). His career has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1979), the National Film Theatre in London (1982) and the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris (1986). In 1990 the American Film Institute honored Blank with the Maya Deren award for outstanding lifetime achievement by an independent filmmaker.
Combining obsessions with music and food, Blank gives his movies a taste and feel that few commercial filmmakers can match. He's not above cooking up a mess of red beans and rice behind the screen to enhance the experience. He reminds us that movies can be used to celebrate life.
- Born:
November 27, 1935 in Tampa, Florida, USA
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Job Titles:
Documentarian, Producer, Film instructor
Family
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Son: Harrod Blank. born c. 1965; directed the documentary Wild Wheels
Education
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University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, communications
Milestones
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1962 Made industrials for Holly Farms Poultry, Archway Cookies, National Wildlife Federation, educational films and TV films
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1964 Made first film, Dizzy Gillespie (for TV)
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1967 First independently produced film, God Respects Us When We Work but Loves Us When We Dance (20 mins; on first Los Angeles love-in )
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1967 Founded Flower Films
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1974 First feature-length film, A Poem is a Naked Person (72 mins; unreleased; on country-rock performer Leon Russell)
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1976 Received Guggenheim Fellowship
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1979 Subject of retrospective at Museum of Modern Art, New York
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1982 Subject of retrospective at National Film Theatre, London
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1984 Louis B Mayer filmmaker-in-residence, Dartmouth; directing fellow, Sundance Institute
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1984 Subject of retrospective at Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City
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1986 Subject of retrospective at Cinematheque-Francaise, Paris
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1990 Subject of retrospective at Independent Film Week, Augsberg, West Germany
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1991 Began teaching film at University of California, Berkeley
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Outstanding filmmaker-in-residence, San Diego State University