Les Blank, a filmmaker with an eye for the eccentric, dies at 77

Blank won a British Academy Award for ‘Burden of Dreams’. – Reuters pic

BERKELEY, April 9 — Filmmaker Les Blank, whose documentaries explored US jazz, polka and Cajun music and also delved into more eccentric subjects including gap-toothed women and Chinese tea, died on Sunday, his son said.

Blank died at his home in Berkeley, California, from bladder cancer, Harrod Blank said. He was 77.

Blank might be most widely remembered for his 1982 documentary “Burden of Dreams”, which chronicled the making of the epic “Fitzcarraldo” by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, a movie about a man determined to haul a steamship over a mountain in a South American jungle.

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