Highly acclaimed, maverick auteur of off-beat documentaries ranging from "Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers" (1980, a cultural-folk history of the magic herb), to "In Heaven There Is no Beer?" (1984, on Polish polka dancing), to "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe" (1980, the result of the eponymous German director's losing a bet with his former assistant, Errol Morris).Blank's best known work is the feature-length "Burden of Dreams" (1982), an extraordinary account of the production of Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo" (1982). His career has been the subject of major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art
