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Les Blank

Date of Birth / Doğum Tarihi
27 November 1935, Tampa, Florida, USA

Mini Biography / Biyografi
Born in 1935 in Tampa, Florida, Les Blank attended Tulane University in New Orleans, where he received a B.A. in English literature and an M.F.A. in theatre. In 1967, after two years in the Ph.D. film program at the University of Southern California, and five years of freelancing in Los Angeles, he began his first independent films, on Texas blues singer Lightnin' Hopkins (_Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins, The (1969)_ ) and the newly forming sub-culture known as flower children, (God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance (1968).) To finance these and other of his own films, he continued to make industrial and promotional films for such organizations as Holly Farms Poultry, Archway Cookies and the National Wildlife Federation until 1972.Blank's first independent films began a series of intimate glimpses into the lives and music of passionate people who live at the periphery of American society - a series that grew to include rural Louisiana French musicians and cooks.Major retrospectives of Les Blank's films have been mounted in Los Angeles at FILMEX in 1977; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in 1978 and 1984; New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1979; the National Film Theatre, London, 1982; Cineteca Nacional, Mexico City, 1984; the Cinematheque Francais, Paris, 1986; the Independent Film Week, Augsburg, Germany, 1990 and the Leipzig Film Festival, 1995 and the Sofia Music Film Festival, Bulgaria, 1998. Feature articles on Blank have appeared in American Film, Film Quarterly, Take One, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Image Magazine, Mother Jones, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Premiere, Downbeat and Video Review. In 1984 Blank co-edited the Burden of Dreams book, which included journals written during the making of Burden of Dreams by him, sound recordist-editor Maureen Gosling and Werner Herzog, plus an article by legendary journalist Michael Goodwin. In 1986, National Public Radio aired a half-hour special on Les Blank's work and in 1991 CNN aired a special on him worldwide.Among Blank's numerous awards are the British Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary, 1982, (Burden of Dreams (1982)); the Golden Gate Award "Best of Festival", San Francisco Film Festival, 1982 (Burden of Dreams); Grand Prize, Melbourne Film Festival, 1985 (In Heaven There Is No Beer? (1984)); Special Jury Award U.S. (Sundance) Film Festival, 1985 (In Heaven There Is No Beer?); Grand Award, Houston Film Festival, 1983 (Burden of Dreams); Golden Hugo, Chicago Film Festival, 1969 (_Blues Accordin' To Lightnin' Hopkins, The (1969)_ ). Blank also received a 10,000 Euro prize for Yum, Yum, Yum for best film in the International Ethnographic Film Festival, Nuoro, Sardinia, Italy, 2002In 1990, Les Blank received the American Film Institute's Maya Deren Award for outstanding lifetime achievement as an independent filmmaker. In 1989-1990 Blank was the distinguished filmmaker-in-residence at San Diego State University and in 1991, adjunct assistant professor in film at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also the Louis B. Mayer filmmaker-in-residence at Dartmouth College and a directing fellow at the Sundance Institute in Utah (both in 1984). His work has been supported by The National Endowment For the Arts, The American Film Institute, The National Endowment For the Humanities, The Ford Foundation, The Guggenheim Foundation, PBS and the BBC. Between 1973 and 1994 Blank toured extensively with the sponsorship of the United States Information Agency, screening his films and discussing them with audiences throughout Latin America, China, England, Spain, Germany, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Egypt. Les Blank is a member of: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Blank currently has four documentaries in production: about David Lee Hoffman, importer of rare and fine teas rom China; Alabama folk artist Butch Anthony; seminal documentary filmmaker Richard Leacock; and a project on the diRosa preserve in Napa, a major collection of Northern California art. IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

Trivia / Önemsiz Şeyler
Father of Harrod Blank