Go See a Film Whose Name We Are Not Allowed To Tell You

By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 10, 2012 7:00PM

For those of us dogpaddling around the information glut it can be easy to forget that films can still be controversial, even dangerous. You probably don't need to remind Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker (and U.S. Citizen) Laura Poitras, whose shameful treatment at the hands of the Department of Homeland Security has been dropping a few jaws week. Or Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whose document of time spent under house arrest while forbidden from making films, the cheekily titled This Is Not a Film, begins a run at the Film Center next week. The film had to be smuggled out of Iran in a cake. The Weinstein Company has used the controversy of Bully's transit through MPAA's alphabet soup of ratings to get an incredible amount of press for the film.

But why is next weekend's screening of an almost 40-year old rock documentary by an affable chronicler of Americana so dangerous that if we were to publish its name, the screening would have to be canceled?

It's not controversial politics or oppressive regimes which prevent the dissemination of either the title or the subject of this very rarely screened film. Rather, it is the personal pique of its subject and a still-standing legal injunction. Though the Washington Post "the best film ever made on rock," the film can only be screened non-commercially and in the presence of its director, and its name may not appear before it screens.

The film is scheduled to screen on Saturday, April 21 as part of a Les Blank Retrospective presented by Columbia College Chicago Television Department. You can find the name of this documentary through a non-taxing bit of Internet sleuthing, or show up and be surprised. The 74-year old independent-minded documentarian behind the film-which-shall-not-be-named, Les Blank, is a decidedly unlikely wearer of such legal handcuffs, in our opinion.

Blank has built a prolific career on clear-eyed, charitable portraits of whatever snags his attention, and we have yet to watch one that didn't hold our attention and teach us something. Many are documents of marginal but uniquely American threads of the American cultural tapestry, such as documentaries on blues musicians, Appalachian folk musicians, Creole culture, Polka music. Others are snapshots of something we now realize how lucky we are to have, such as 1967 Los Angeles Love-in or an ingenious essay on gap-toothed women.

We first encountered Blank in his 1980 short, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, in which the eccentric German director does exactly that. His subsequent full-length chronicle of Herzog's absurd, quixotic and legendary filming of Fitzcarraldo (including the attempt to drag a ship across a mountain) is something we've been known to recommend that everybody watch. His most recent documentary feature about a tea-obsessed entrepreneur traveling through China was a vivid travelogue from a rapidly disappearing world, and made us consider booking a trip.

There's a lot to love about, and a lot to learn from, Blank's work. We feel it is decidedly uncontroversial to recommend both the mystery rock feature and the two screenings of his shorts on Monday.

UPDATE: We neglected to mention a few other screenings of Blank's work which will occur while the director is in town. Three screenings, with two films apiece, will take place at the Logan Theater as part of CIMMfest: one on Friday, April 13 and two on Saturday, April 14. These screenings will be in 16mm. See the CIMMfest lineup for more information. Then on Friday, April 20 two more Blank titles, each on gastronomic themes, will be screened at The Nightingale. Blankophiles like us are sure feeling spoiled right about now.

The Saturday April 21st screening of the rock doc which dare not speak its name will be at 7 p.m. and the two shorts programs will take place on the following Monday at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. All screenings are free and will be held at Film Row Cinema, located at 1104 S. Wabash, 8th Floor.