Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers

Les Blank's 1980 documentary is a hymn to garlic. It was shot at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California and in various places across Northern California, telling the history, cultivation, culinary and curative place of garlic through the mouths of the people who love it. Alice Waters of Chez Panisse appears, and Werner Herzog turns up around the fifteen minute mark to talk about Nosferatu. Blank's documentary practice aims not at conveying information but at conveying a sensory experience; the camera stays on food being prepared, on hands and on faces. It premiered at the 1980 Berlin Film Festival. In 2004 the Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry, placing it among the films to be preserved in perpetuity. Who it's for: viewers who like food culture documentaries and Les Blank's observational cinema. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a dense, structured informational documentary, or who will think the subject too narrow.