Les Blank Receives Edward MacDowell Medal
Les Blank, one of America’s nicest, kindest, and most influential documentary filmmakers is also an honorary West Virginian. He has been to the state several times including most recently visiting Allan Balliett’s organic farm in Shepherdstown last spring. In March 1980 he was the guest of the “Outside the Mainstream” film night that included being the best man at my wedding - at the Dunbar Public Library.
Les has a great website……You can read an essay I wrote about him , “Les Blank –The New Christopher Columbus.” I have known Les since spring 1978 when he came to Minneapolis for a restrospective of his films at Walker Art Center. I brought him back to Minneapolis for the world premiere of “Always for Pleasure” at the U Film Society and then programmed him at The New Riverside Cafe to show other films. I brought him to WV twice - once in March 1980 and then latter for the WV International Film Festival. He also visited Elkins that time, showing films at The Augusta Heritage Festival. WVLC Film Services bought all of his films, screening them around the state. Once, some visiting filmmakers from Scotland kissed my feet when I told them about my connection to Les. I also worked on his film, “In Heaven There is No Beer?”
Les’ greatest film in my opinion is “Chulas Fronteras”(Happy Borders). It is still the greatest film about Tex-Mex culture. It was chosen early as one of the first films for the National Film Register. He is best-known for his British Oscar-winning film, “Burden of Dreams,” called one of the greatest films ever about the creative process.
He has made several films about Appalachians including one about a guy from Southern WV - “Stoney Knows How.” The film was actually made in Columbus. It tells the story of a tattoo artist who lived a very interesting life.
In 1978, I wrote a MLS thesis called “Cinema Anti-Therapy” that was about the films of Les, Werner Herzog, and Al Maysles, showing how they reveal a deep sympathy for people whose lives are often judged “bad” by normative psychology, e.g., the Minnesota Multi-Phasic Test. This thesis was rejected, but part of it was published in “Film/Psychology Review,” and I was interviewed by Behavior Today magazine, at that time one of the largest psychology magazines in the country. I was also interviewed live on ABC radio in Detroit, and for about 6 months was invited to international conferences, etc. I once studied to become a psychiatric nurse, inspired by the evils shown in the book, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I rejected the prevailing behavioristic attitudes of the day, and was forced into quitting the program just shy of getting a RN/BS degree from the oldest university nursing school in the country at the University of Minnesota. Latter I chaired the American Film Festival’s international committee on “New films on health and mental heath,” replacing NYU Medical School. First Lady Dee Caperton, working on a Ph.D. in psychology and the head of CAMC’s psychiatric division were also on the jury.
Here is what was published in the press release for the award from the MacDowell Colony-
This year, its 48th year of honoring artists who have made outstanding contributions to their fields, The MacDowell Colony will award its Edward MacDowell Medal to documentary filmmaker Les Blank. Mr. Blank joins an impressive list of past recipients, including Thornton Wilder, Georgia O’Keeffe, I.M. Pei, and Merce Cunningham.
The award will be presented to Mr. Blank in a public ceremony during the special Centennial Medal Day celebration on Sunday, August 12, 2007, beginning at 12:15 p.m. on The MacDowell Colony grounds in
Peterborough, New Hampshire. Noted broadcast journalist and author Robert MacNeil, chairman of The MacDowell Colony, will present the Medal, along with Carter Wiseman, president of the board, and Cheryl Young, executive director.“I am greatly honored to have my name added to such a distinguished group of artists who have received the MacDowell Medal,” says Mr. Blank. “I look forward to my first visit to the Colony and am eagerly priming my imagination to be on the lookout for the spirits of these great people who have gone before me.”Regarded as one of the seminal figures in documentary filmmaking, Les Blank’s career has spanned a range of subjects that profile passionate people at the periphery of American society and the heart of its folklore. He has uncovered Polish-American polka dancers (In Heaven There Is No Beer?), Appalachian fiddlers (Sprout Wings and Fly), and American tourists in
Europe (Innocents Abroad). He is also known for his intimate portrayals of such prominent figures as Werner Herzog (Burden of Dreams) and Lightnin’
Hopkins (The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins). About Blank’s work, Time critic Jay Cocks wrote, “I can’t believe that anyone interested in movies or America … could watch [his] work without feeling they’d been granted a casual, soft-spoken revelation.” New York Times’ critic Vincent Canby has said that Blank “is a master of movies about the American idiom … one of our most original filmmakers.” Born in 1935, Blank studied at Tulane and the Ph.D. film program at the University of
Southern California. Since completing his education, he has created more than 30 films that have received numerous awards, including a British Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, a special jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and a Grand Prize at the Melbourne Film Festival. Major retrospectives of Blank’s films have been mounted in Los Angeles at FILMEX; the
Walker
Art
Center in Minneapolis; New York’s
Museum of
Modern Art; and
Paris’s La Cinematheque Francaise. In 1990, Les Blank received the American Film Institute’s Maya Deren Award for outstanding lifetime achievement as an independent filmmaker.“Not only has Les created a distinguished body of work documenting some of America’s most obscure cultures and musical artists, but he’s pursued his cinematic passion in semi-obscurity with the most meager of resources,” says director Taylor Hackford (Ray, An Officer and a Gentleman), the chairman of this year’s Medal Selection Committee. “Les’s films will definitely live for generations to come, enlightening the world about
America’s rich and diverse musical roots.” Mr. Hackford was joined on the committee by filmmakers Ken Burns, Spike Jonze, Mira Nair, and Steven Soderbergh, as well as artist Anna Deavere Smith and Telluride Film Festival co-director Tom Luddy.Since 1907, The MacDowell Colony has provided more than 6,000 artists of all disciplines with the time and private space for creative work. In assigning film as its own discipline in 1970, MacDowell was one of the first arts organizations to actively sponsor filmmakers. Since then, it has awarded Fellowships to more than 250 filmmakers, including such award-winners as Stewart Stern (co-writer, Rebel Without a Cause), Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace), Jennie Livingston (Paris Is Burning), and Academy Award-winner Jessica Yu (Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien). In May of this year, theMuseum of
Modern Art paid tribute to the history of Colony filmmaking with a two-week, 10-part traveling series entitled “Filmmakers at MacDowell: The Studio System Reconsidered.”
The pictures - at the top is a pict of Les and his good friend Werner Herzog showing their new matching tattoos. Below are picts of Les with Allan Balliett in Shepherdstown last spring, the poster for the event, Les with WV Filmmaker of the Year Ray Schmitt at that event, and a picture of Les performing as my best man at my wedding on March 17th, 1980 at The Dunbar Public Library before a Cajun feast and night of his films, ending with a celebration at The Red Carpet on the East End. Officiating was then Chief Supreme Court Justice Darrell McGraw Jr. My step-daughter Rosemary is to the left. At bottom is a pict of Les in Elkins visiting the Augusta Heritage Festival with Dr. Mike Vavrus, head of the Elkins Film Club. I am on his left.
