http://www.cinefamily.org/calendar/friday_early.html

3/28 @ 7:30pm / $10 / SERIES: local flavor

Les Blank Program Four

Running Around Like a Chicken with Its Head Cut Off
This student film is an homage to Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal, the film that inspired Blank to become a filmmaker.
Dir. Les Blank, 1960, 4 min

Chicken Real
This surreal, sidesplitting industrial documentary made for an automated chicken-growing operation is a must-see in the Blank canon: its plethora of chicken songs alone elicits the sort of heady disorientation that would make Kafka jealous.
Dir. Les Blank, 1970, 23 min

All This in Tea
Blank’s latest film follows world-renowned tea expert and adventurer David Lee Hoffman as he journeys to remote regions of China in search of the best handmade teas in the world. The quest becomes a fascinating document of one man’s obsessive and admirable struggle to transform our experience of commerce, by recognizing quality, rarity, and craftsmanship, and by dissolving the barriers between the (underpaid, invisible) artisan and the consumer. Along the way, Blank treats us to a condensed, sensual history of tea, and countless unconventional moments that perfectly echo the sense of peculiar pleasure he’s honed over a remarkable 47-year career.
Dir. Les Blank, 2007, 70 min