''Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers'' is a 1980

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

about

garlic Garlic (''Allium sativum'') is a species of bulbous flowering plant in the genus ''Allium''. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, Allium fistulosum, Welsh onion and Allium chinense, Chinese onion. It is native to South A ...

directed by

Les Blank Les Blank (November 27, 1935 – April 7, 2013) was an American documentary filmmaker best known for his portraits of American traditional musicians. Life and career Leslie Harrod Blank Jr. was born November 27, 1935 in Tampa, Florida. He atten ...

. In 2004, the film was selected for preservation in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

’

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception i ...

by the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” The

Academy Film Archive The Academy Film Archive is part of the Academy Foundation, established in 1944 with the purpose of organizing and overseeing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ educational and cultural activities, including the preservation of m ...

preserved ''Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers'' in 1999. It was filmed at the

Gilroy Garlic Festival The Gilroy Garlic Festival was a food festival in the United States, held annually from 1979 to 2019 at Christmas Hill Park in Gilroy, California, on the last full weekend in July. After cancellation in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a drive-t ...

Gilroy, California Gilroy is a city in Northern California's Santa Clara County, south of Morgan Hill and north of San Benito County. Gilroy is the southernmost city in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a population of 56,766 as of the 2019 U.S. Census Projection ...

, as well as in other locations in

Northern California Northern California (colloquially known as NorCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California. Spanning the state's northernmost 48 counties, its main population centers incl ...

. Its official premiere was at the 1980

Berlin Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

. The director recommends that, when the film is shown, a toaster oven containing several heads of

be turned on in the rear of the theater, unbeknownst to the audience, with the intended result that approximately halfway through the showing the entire theater will be filled with the smell of garlic. In Blank's

1982 Events January * January 1 – In Malaysia and Singapore, clocks are adjusted to the same time zone, UTC+8 (GMT+8.00). * January 13 – Air Florida Flight 90 crashes shortly after takeoff into the 14th Street bridges, 14th Street Bridge in ...

film ''

Burden of Dreams ''Burden of Dreams'' is a 1982 "making-of" documentary film directed by Les Blank, shot during and about the chaotic production of Werner Herzog's 1982 film ''Fitzcarraldo'', and filmed on location in the jungles of Peru. Plot summary Cast * We ...

'', a documentary chronicling the filming of ''

Fitzcarraldo ''Fitzcarraldo'' () is a 1982 West German epic adventure-drama film written, produced and directed by Werner Herzog, and starring Klaus Kinski as would-be rubber baron, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known in Peru as Fitzcarraldo, who i ...

'', director

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with un ...

and other crew members can be seen wearing "Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers" T-shirts.

Title

The title is a shortened form of the saying "Garlic is as good as ten mothers... for keeping the girls away."

References

External links

* *
''Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers'' page
from Les Blank site

*''Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers'' essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 , pages 763-76

1980 films American documentary films United States National Film Registry films Films directed by Les Blank Garlic 1980 documentary films Documentary films about food and drink 1980s American films {{US-documentary-film-stub

Title

See also

References

External links