How To Smell A Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy

How To Smell A Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy

2014 · 65 min · ★ 4.8 · Documentary

In the year 2000, Les Blank, along with co-filmmaker Gina Leibrecht, visited Richard Leacock (1921-2011) at his farm in Normandy, France and recorded conversations with him about his life, his work, and his other passion: cooking! With the flair of a seasoned raconteur, Leacock recounts key moments in his seventy years as a filmmaker and the innovations that he, D.A. Pennebaker, Albert Maysles and others invented that revolutionized documentary filmmaking, and explores the mystery of creativity. With the passing of both Blank and Leacock, the documentary is a moving insight into the lives of two seminal figures in the history of film.

Directed by Gina Leibrecht

Your Rating

Where to Watch

Streaming

Criterion Channel

Rent or Buy

Amazon VideoGoogle Play MoviesYouTube

Cast

Make it a double feature

2h 48m together

How To Smell A Rose: A Visit with Ricky Leacock at his Farm in Normandy

Black Box Diaries

A close match in mood and era.

More from Gina LeibrechtSee all →

All In This TeaAll In This Tea · 2007
All In This Tea
★ 7.42007
MovieDocumentary
During the 1990s, David Lee Hoffman searched throughout China for the finest teas. He's a California importer who, as a youth, lived in Asia for years and took tea with the Dali Lama. Hoffman's mission is to find and bring to the U.S. the best hand picked and hand processed tea. This search takes him directly to farms and engages him with Chinese scientists, business people, and government officials: Hoffman wants tea grown organically without a factory, high-yield mentality. By 2004, Hoffman has seen success: there are farmer's collectives selling tea, ways to export "boutique tea" from China, and a growing Chinese appreciation for organic farming's best friend, the earthworm.
You Are What You Eat: A Twin ExperimentYou Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment · 2024
You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment
★ 6.62024
SeriesDocumentary
Identical twins change their diets and lifestyles for eight weeks in a unique scientific experiment designed to explore how certain foods impact the body.
Training RulesTraining Rules · 2009
Training Rules
★ 3.52009
MovieDocumentaryDrama
Examines how women's collegiate sports, caught in a web of homophobic practices, collude in the destruction of the lives and dreams of many of its most talented athletes.
Wilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the FutureWilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future · 2018
Wilder than Wild: Fire, Forests, and the Future
2018
MovieDocumentary
Wilder than Wild reveals how fire suppression and climate change have exposed Western forests to large, high intensity wildfires, while greenhouse gases released from these fires contribute to global warming. This vicious cycle jeopardizes our forests and affects us all with extreme weather and more wildfires, some of which are now entering highly populated wildland-urban areas.

More Like This

Black Box DiariesBlack Box Diaries · 2024
Black Box Diaries
★ 7.62024
MovieDocumentary
Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country's outdated judicial and societal systems.
Olympia Part One: Festival of the NationsOlympia Part One: Festival of the Nations · 1938
Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations
★ 6.91938
MovieDocumentary
Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Olympia Part Two: Festival of BeautyOlympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty · 1938
Olympia Part Two: Festival of Beauty
★ 6.71938
MovieDocumentary
Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.
Dig!Dig! · 2004
Dig!
★ 6.82004
MovieDocumentaryMusic
A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter