Documentarian Les Blank, director of many exceptional films, often captured his longtime home, Berkeley, on film. Tom Luddy helped orchestrate the now-legendary event at the UC Theater documented in Blank’s Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. The community that arose around the Pacific Film Archive and the restaurant Chez Panisse is captured by Blank in many films, including Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers, a paean to the history of the stinking rose, featuring chef Alice Waters and a host of other garlic lovers who praise its culinary as well as healing attributes. The San Francisco Chronicle called the film “a joyous, nose-tweaking, ear-tingling, mouth-watering tribute to a Life Force.” Also on this program are interviews with Luddy, Waters, and Herzog produced by the Criterion Collection. 

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