Filmed in 1968, while Les Blank was shooting THE BLUES ACCORDIN’ TO LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS, THE SUN’S GONNA SHINE is the director’s lyrical re-creation of a memory from Hopkins’s youth, when he decided, at age eight, to stop chopping cotton and start singing for a living. This ten-minute film features...

This seven-minute outtake from THE BLUES ACCORDIN’ TO LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS features the bluesman singing the classic song “Mr. Charlie, Your Rollin’ Mill is Burnin’ Down.”

Lightnin’ Hopkins initially resisted Les Blank’s attempts to film him, but he softened after a long night the two spent playing cards together. This footage shows Hopkins performing a song he wrote in honor of the filmmaker’s futile efforts at the table.

This short piece, produced in 2014, features an interview with Skip Gerson, director Les Blank’s collaborator on THE BLUES ACCORDIN’ TO LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS.

In this interview, conducted in September 2013, filmmaker Taylor Hackford, a lifelong admirer of the work of Les Blank, discusses THE BLUES ACCORDIN’ TO LIGHTNIN’ HOPKINS, the film that galvanized Blank’s career.