The session opens with a short piece about Christopher Tree, a musician who composed in nature using 40 Tibetan gongs, flutes, kettledrums and windchimes, conceiving music as meditation and inner exploration. The Sun’s Gonna Shine is a poetic recreation of the moment when Lightnin’ Hopkins, legendary blues guitarist, decided at the age of eight to leave the cottonfields and devote himself to music. Dry Wood documents the life of Louisiana’s Creole community through its music, its festivals, its food and its traditions. Spend It All is an ode to the Cajun culture of southwest Louisiana with its celebrations, fishing and work scenes, and its great local musicians.
Blank’s camera immerses itself in these communities in such a way that the very gestures of creation—the filming, the editing—are imbued with their joy and spirit of resistance: “I’ve always been passionate about people who live outside mainstream society and find beauty and pleasure in things that others may overlook.”
Les Blank: Christopher Tree, 1968, 16mm, 10 min; The Sun’s Gonna Shine, 1969, 16mm, 10 min; Dry Wood, 1973, 16mm, 37 min; Spend It All,1971, 16mm, 40 min.
16mm screening, original version with Catalan subtitles.
Copies provided by Academy Film Archive.
Acknowledgements: Les Blank Films Inc. and Harrod Blank.
