Documentary film
Les Blank & Ross Brothers • Americana
12 Apr - 9 Jun 2023
The event is over
Western de Turner Ross & Bill Ross IV © Michael Gottwald, Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross (DR)
“Americana” is probably the best term to define the cinema of Les Blank and Bill and Turner Ross.
Western de Turner Ross & Bill Ross IV © Michael Gottwald, Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross (DR)
Les Blank (1935-2013), famous for his Burden of Dreams (1982), the story of the catastrophic filming of Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo in the Amazon jungle, has spent his life travelling through the United States, while filming blues and jazz musicians (Dizzy Gillespie, Lightin’Hopkins), folk singers (Leon Russell, Tommy Jarell) and the French Cajun musicians from Louisiana and Texas.
Blank, who grew up in the tradition of the American direct cinema, approaches his often colorful characters with a benevolent yet uncomplacent eye. He always films them at their habitat, as if to stress the local roots of their cultures. Those cultures have marked the identity of the whole country and Les Blank’s film are national treasures today.
A highlight of Les Blank’s work is Always for Pleasure (1978), a lyrical evocation of the New Orleans’ Mardi Gras festivities. It’s also one of the favorite films of Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, two brothers who, since 2009, film small communities and big spaces, from their Mid-West Ohio where they were born and raised – and made their first film 45365 (2009) – to the frontier with Mexico – scenery for Western (2015), the 3rd part of their “American trilogy”.
“We owe everything to Les Blank”, Turner states, inspired like his brother by Blank’s spirit of freedom and immersion. The Ross Brothers sometimes film at the very same spot where Les Blank shot his films – notably in New Orleans, where they work and live today – but they have developed a very personal and visual style of filmmaking, based on careful preparation and occasional casting of their characters (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, 2020). Their films are apparently less spontaneous than the direct observation by Les Blank but the Ross Brother share with him the desire – and the talent – to capture authentic moments in order to depict an America rich in its diversity, far from the usual clichés.
Bill and Turner Ross will be in Paris 12 to 20 of April to accompany all their films, for this very first and complete tribute in France. They will present for the first time in Europe their “epic home-movie” River (2013), account of their improbable journey by houseboat on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, as well as a medium-length film especially made for this cycle, Rose City Hurricane, a humorous and poetic assessment of fifteen years of independent documentary moviemaking, in today’s turbulent world.
Harrod Blank, Les’ son, very active in preserving and restoring the films by his father, will be at Centre Pompidou 20 to 27 of April, accompanied by Maureen Gosling, for 20 years Les Blank’s co-director. In their luggage, several Les Blank films never shown before in France, as well as a brand new restoration of Burden of Dreams.
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The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins © Les Blank Films / Western © Michael Gottwald, Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross (DR)