Les Blank’s BURDEN OF DREAMS is the riveting account of the near-disastrous 
production of director Werner Herzog’s 
FITZCARRALDO, starring Klaus Kinski in the titular role and Claudia Cardinale, which traces the story of one man’s attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. As cast members drop like flies (original lead Jason Robards Jr. became ill with dysentery and was forbidden by his doctors to return to Peru to finish filming; ship captain Mick 
Jagger had to leave to tour with the Rolling Stones), a prop ship is trapped in the rapids, and Herzog makes impossible demands, haranguing hundreds of native Campa, Machiguenga, and Aguaruna people to pull a full-size, 320-ton steamship over a small mountain. Anchored by an as-it-was-happening interview with Herzog himself, as Blank details his unflinching vision for a project that took 
nearly five years to pull off. BURDEN OF DREAMS has endured as a fascinating–and controversial–record of the filmmaking process and a unique look into the mind of one of cinema’s most idiosyncratic and fearless directors. BURDEN OF 
DREAMS won the BAFTA award for Best Documentary and co- filmmaker, editor & sound recordist Maureen Gosling (whose 20- year long collaboration with Blank produced over twenty films) was nominated for Best Edited Documentary. Founder of Argot Pictures, Jim Browne joins us for a conversation on working with Les Blank’s son, Harrod, on the restoration, on his own history of promoting and distributing Les Blank’s films, his friendship with Les and Blank collaborator Margaret Gosling and why Blank deserves to be seen as one of cinema’s most accomplished documentary filmmakers.
Download MP3 Podcast | Open Player in New Window
For more go to: /argotpictures.com/film/burden-of-dreams
About our guest – Argot Pictures founder and president Jim Browne brings three decades of film industry experience to Argot Pictures. His innovative, hands-on approach to distribution emphasizes innovation and collaboration, helping independent filmmakers navigate a highly competitive marketplace while elevating the profile of their projects.Jim is an experienced international film festival programmer, working for the Tribeca Film Festival (2005-2010), the Abu Dhabi Film Festival (2010-2014), and the Shanghai International Film Festival (2016-2018). Argot Pictures has distributed dozens of films, including Marshall Curry’s Academy Award®-nominated Street Fight, John Pirozzi’s Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll, Throw Down Your Heart, a documentary about legendary banjo player Béla Fleck, Stacy Peralta’s Crips and Bloods: Made in America, and Leah Warshawski & Todd Soliday’s Big Sonia.
About the restoration – The 2024 breath-taking 6.5K frame by frame restoration and remastering of Burden of Dreams which features 5.1 sound, and involved replacing all pre-recorded and live music, spanned 2 years of meticulous work. The restoration was executive produced by Harrod Blank, Les Blank’s son, and financed by Les Blank Films, Inc. a non-profit that the director created before his death. The picture was conformed by Anthony Matt, color corrected by Paul Cope and then cleaned and restored using Diamant software by Anthony Matt. Maureen Gosling, who recorded and edited the original film also worked on quality control and assisted in the mix and audio tweaks. All of the audio restoration work was done by Nick Bergh.
About the filmmaker – Director, Producer Les Blank is an internationally renowned, independent filmmaker, whose poetic work offers intimate, idiosyncratic glimpses into the lives, culture, and music of the passionate people at the periphery of American society. His film topics have included Cajun, Mexican, Polish, Hawaiian, and Serbian-American music and food traditions, Afro-Cuban drummers, Texas blues men, Applachian fiddles, “flower children”, gap-toothed women, and the garlic plant. Blanks is best known for Burden of Dreams (1982/2024), documenting the chaotic production of fellow director, and friend, Werner Herzog’s 1982 film, Fitzcarraldo in the jungles of South America. Honored with a Criterion DVD edition, and a British Academy Award, Roger Ebert called Burden of dreams, “…one of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie.” Another of Blank’s best-loved works is Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (1980), a seminal film featuring culinary pioneer Alice Waters, and the Gilroy Garlic Festival. This film, notorious for its mouthwateringness, was initially shown in “Aromaround” with garlic simultaneously roasted in-theater. Les Blank enlisted a handful of talented people to help with his films, beginning with Skip Gerson, followed by Maureen Gosling, Chris Simon, Susan Kell, Marianne Yusavage, David Silberberg, son, Harrod Blank and Gina Leibrecht.
About the filmmaker – Co-Filmmaker, Editor & Sound Recordist Maureen Gosling has been a documentary filmmaker since 1972, Gosling has served as a director, producer, editor, sound recordist, distributor. She is best known for her 20-year collaboration with the late Les Blank on over twenty films, including the British Academy Award-winning Burden of Dreams, I Went to the Dance, Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers and Gap-Toothed Women. She directed, produced, and edited the feature documentary, The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane on jazz/blues/folk singer activist Barbara Dane; This Ain’t No Mouse Music!, with Chris Simon, on the legacy of American roots music record producer, Chris Strachwitz; and the short Bamako Chic, with Maxine Downs PhD. She directed, edited, and produced Blossoms of Fire, on the Zapotecs of southern Oaxaca, Mexico. For the last 16 years she has worked with producer, Jed Riffe, on nine films, including Leistocene Park, now streaming on VICE-TV; and The Long Shadow, broadcast on PBS. Her films have been broadcast nationally and internationally, shown theatrically, and distributed educationally. In April 2023, Gosling was honored at the Centre Pompidou’s cycle “Americana: Les Blank & the Ross Brothers” and in 2024, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley’s Les Blank Retrospective. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Sciences.
SOCIAL MEDIA
facebook.com/argotpictures
instagram.com/argotpictures
“One of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie.” – Roger Ebert
“A monument to Herzog’s almost masochistic desire to do the impossible.” – Derek Malcolm, The Guardian
“Extraordinary…one of the most exquisitely detailed, dramatically compelling films ever made about the creative process.” – Michael Blown, Boston Globe
“BURDEN OF DREAMS is overflowing with quotable lines about the romance of giving everything you have to the art of filmmaking… Catnip for film students pushing their own Sisyphean ambitions up the proverbial hill and seasoned cinephiles taking time to appreciate the insurmountable challenges that their heroes faced to make their favorite movies.” – Christian Zilko, IndieWire
“The beauty of BURDEN OF DREAMS rests greatly in how Blank and his editor/sound recorder Maureen Gosling capture not just Herzog’s dogged psyche but also the singular ecosystem surrounding it. The making of FITZCARRALDO may be its subject, yet BURDEN OF DREAMS endures as an autonomous beast, a vision of the arduous nature of quixotic filmmaking set against a beguilingly uncooperative world.” – Fernando Croce, Reverse Shot