Global ImageWorks is thrilled to represent and license footage from the outstanding catalog of over 40 films by Les Blank and his talented collaborators who worked with him over the years.

Les Blank (1935-2013) is an internationally renowned, independent filmmaker whose poetic work offers intimate, indiosyncratic glimpses into the lives, culture and music of the passionate people at the periphery of American society.

"Blank is a documentarian of folk cultures who transforms anthropology into art”

- John Rockwell (New York Times)

Blank’s film topics have included Cajun, Mexican, Polish, Hawaiian and Serbian-American music and food traditions, Afro-Cuban drummers, Texas blues-men, Appalachian fiddlers, 1967 love-in “flower children”, gap-toothed women and the garlic plant.

Blank is probably best known for his feature-length “Burden of Dreams” (1982) documenting the chaotic production of Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” in the jungles of South America.

His music films capture not just the music itself but frame the music's cultural context, portraying the surroundings from which these American roots music come and offer an amazing opportunity for stock footage.

From the seminal food film, ‘Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers” (1980).

Lightnin' Hopkins and Mansce Lipscomb from The Blues Accordin' to Lightnin' Hopkins

Recently completed and released is his 1974 film ‘A Poem is a Naked Person” about musician Leon Russell.