Always for Pleasure - Comments & Tips

A gorgeous snapshot of a beautiful community, finding joy in the past and the present. It’s a valuable time capsule of a people who’ve endured and have found catharsis in the fact. Such a rich culture and celebration that Les doesn’t feel the need to staple a thesis onto- he lets you bask and luxuriate in it so you can see the meaning for yourself.

The second-line parade celebrates the arrival of death, but it is a funeral without the dead. Mardi Gras has elements of the dances that the slaves celebrated. They are two faces of the same coin. Freedom is celebrated: that of a path to a perhaps better place and that of brief moments of independence. Les Blank captures the essence of these celebrations in New Orleans, representing music as a meeting between life and death.