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Long before he developed the still controversial cinematic technique of utilizing reenactments in The Thin Blue Line or his confessional-esque straight-to-lens Interrotron which was used for the first time in Fast, Cheap and Out of Control and continues to employ in works like his recent It’s Not Crazy, It’s Sports series for Espn, Errol Morris was struck by the absurdities found within the average American. Superbly paired together in their first HD home releases by the Criterion Collection, Morris’s first two features, Gates of Heaven and Vernon, Florida, simply observe the expressive outpourings of rural folk, the lens taking in their unaccountably amusing opinions, worries and musings on life and local events with local, unadorn color featuring above all.

The start of Morris’s filmmaking career unfolded in the wake of working alongside friend and provocateur Werner Herzog on Stroszek after failing to follow through with his...

Many people may know Les Blank most for his association with Werner Herzog, who he filmed while on the brink of creative madness in Burden of Dreams and earlier in Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, in which the notoriously true-to-his-word filmmaker indeed ate his shoe after having promised he’d do so if Errol Morris managed to finish his pet cemetery film, Gates of Heaven. But those ignoring the larger majority of Blank’s overflowing oeuvre would be sorely missing out on the jubilance of life that the quietly curious documentarian managed to strike on film with just his trusty 16mm Eclair, his appreciation for cultures of all kinds, and a fervent hunger for life. Sadly, Blank passed away in the spring of last year, just weeks before receiving the Outstanding Achievement Award and a restored retrospective of his body of work in Toronto at the Hot Docs Film Festival,...