To make Burden of Dreams, Blank discarded 99 percent of the footage he shot, a process he has compared to a sculptor chipping away at a block of stone. In one telling scene shot on location, Herzog talks about the jungle. "Nature here is vile and base," Herzog says. "I see fornication and asphyxiation and choking, fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. The trees here are in misery. The birds here are in misery. I don’t think they sing, they just screech in pain."

At this point in the film there’s a full minute without a human voice, just close-ups of a man cutting then holding up a red bird, an ant lugging a scarlet feather to and fro, a tree frog with its neck pulsing, two more insects, one at a time, all accompanied by the cries of a jungle bird, the Screaming Piha. Blank then cuts back to Herzog expounding on the jungle as "a land that God, if he exists, has created out of anger." It is not that he hates it, says Herzog: "I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment." Blank, like the subject of his film, is fascinated by a love so powerful.

Blank has explained that his aim in making movies is to "expand awareness of the world" and "to appreciate being alive." And that’s what he does. Jump at the next chance to see one of his movies (learn more at www.lesblank.com), and you’ll know what it feels like when people’s dreams—and maybe yours too—learn to dance.