Directed by Les Blank • 1982 • United States
For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career, FITZCARRALDO, the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made more perilous by Herzog’s determination to shoot the most daunting scenes without models or special effects, including a sequence requiring hundreds of native Indians to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. The result is an extraordinary document of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the single-minded mission of one of cinema’s most fearless directors.
Up Next in Documentaries by Les Blank
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Sprout Wings and Fly
Directed by Les Blank • 1983 • United States
Fiddling legend Tommy Jarrell shares his gifts with a new generation.
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In Heaven There Is No Beer?
Directed by Les Blank • 1984 • United States
The life, culture and food of the polka culture in America today.
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Gap-Toothed Women
Directed by Les Blank • 1987 • United States
Filmmaker Les Blank breezily questions our commonly accepted standards of beauty with this paean to women with extra-wide dental spaces.
