Innocents Abroad
In honour of everyone’s planned or longed for summer vacations, we’re happy to presents Innocents Abroad, Les Blank’s amusing portrait of a group of American tourists taking the grand tour of Europe. Blank, whose key documentary eye was often turned towards marginal musical cultures (most notably the Cajun and zydeco music of Louisiana) here turns his camera to the clash of cultures as the New World returns to visit the Old. Blank’s documentary team hops the bus in the tradition of participant observers, taking on the last four seats of a forty person tour (the doc assignment also doubled as Blank’s honeymoon with his collaborator and newlywed wife, Chris Simon). The hapless, uncultured, yet appreciative American tourists are shuttled thorough Europe by a savvy British guide, who provides acerbic asides to Blank’s small documentary team yet gently ushers his charges, and by extension the audience, through the fraught undercurrents of this European safari.
“Other directors, in this context, would go for easy satire … Blank’s special genius is for recognizing and appreciating the particularity of his subjects; this empathy lets him slide right into their mind-sets. We see Tour Group KH1009A not as types but as people–or, more precisely, as the people behind the types: under the corny bad jokes, the friendly awkwardness and clannishness, the regional boasting.” –Michael Wilmington, LA Times, 1992
Programme:
Innocents Abroad, Les Blank, 1992, USA/UK, 16mm, 84 min.
Gladstone Hotel, Ballroom | 1214 Queen St West
Monday July 20, 2015 | 8:00 PM screening | $5-10 suggested donation
Special thanks to the CFMDC.
Innocents Abroad