Telling Stories Our personal folklore is often invisible to us, like water is to a fish. "Doesn't everyone do that?," we might ask. Well, no! Folklore is universal but it is also unique to individuals and communities. Looking back on "The Film of Your Life" is useful not only as biography, revealing perhaps a consistent order and significant drama, but as a way of sharing elders' wisdom with their children, grandchildren, friends, and community members.The Veterans History Project, National Public Radio programs, StoryCorps, YouTube, scrapbooks, digital photo albums, and personal blogs--Americans today are vitally involved in telling their stories. Like photographs or mementoes, documentary films stimulate storytelling about people's own lives. From the Folkstreams "Generations Portal" by Paddy Bowman. |
|
|---|
Appalachian Journey Alan Lomax travels through the Southern Appalachians investigating the songs, dances, and religious rituals of the descendents of the Scotch-Irish frontiers people who have made the mountains their home for centuries. Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Dance, Music, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Religion, Aging / Appalachia / 1991 |  |
|
|
|
The Ballad of Frankie Silver In 1833 Mrs. Frances Silver was hanged in Morganton, North Carolina, for the ax murder of her husband Charles. Tom Davenport's film explores the case through the singing and stories of Bobby McMillon and the comments of North Carolina Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Gray and others. Narrative & Verbal Arts, Women / Appalachia / 1996 |  |
|
|
|
Being A Joines: A Life in the Brushy Mountains John E. "Frail" Joines was a master tale teller from Wilkes County, N. C., on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His hunting tales, stories from World War II, and religious narratives, and the life stories of Frail Joines and his wife Blanche mirror changes that swept away much of the traditional culture of his Appalachian rural community in a single generation and show the character and values with which his family met these circumstances. Narrative & Verbal Arts, Religion, Women, Work, Agriculture, Family, Rural Life, Sports/Hunting / Appalachia / 1981 |  |
|
|
|
Born for Hard Luck: Peg Leg Sam Jackson A film portrait of the last Black medicine-show performer, Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson, with harmonica songs, tales of hoboing, buckdances, and a live medicine-show performance. Healing & Medicine, Music, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Aging, African American Culture / South / 1976 |  |
|
|
|
Catching the Music An hour-long WETA-TV documentary on musician Stephen Wade. Catching the Music describes the passing of the banjo from one player to the next. The film includes footage of Kirk McGee, Hobart Smith, Fleming Brown, Doc Hopkins, Roscoe Holcomb, Pete Steele, Uncle Dave Macon, and Virgil Anderson. Music, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Folkmusic RevivalMiddle Atlantic / 1987 / |  |
|
|
|
Closing Time The New York real estate market forces the oldest store in Little Italy to shut down. The film is a portrait of a family, of the neighborhood that used to be and of the way the city changes in a blink of an eye. Behind the surface, the old store contain small treasures belonging to a part of Italy that does not exist anymore, not even in Italy. Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Family, Regional, Urban Life / Middle Atlantic / 2006 |  |
|
|
|
Dreadful Memories: The Life of Sarah Ogan Gunning, 1910-1983 Born in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky, Gunning suffered a life of bitter poverty which became the fuel for dozens of moving songs about working people, the mines, and the great coal strikes of the twenties and thirties. Gunning's a cappella roots music is intercut throughout the interviews and archival footage. Music, Women, Work, Social Justice/Protest / Appalachia / 1988 |  |
|
|
|
Free Show Tonight Presents a nostalgic tribute to the American medicine shows of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Shows a re-creation of a typical medicine show by veteran performers, as well as archival stills and film footage. Customs, Drama, Healing & Medicine, Music, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Regional, African American Culture / South / 1983 |  |
|
|
|
I Ain't Lying: Folktales from Mississippi 16mm color documentary based on fieldwork William Ferris conducted with African American storytellers and bluesmen in the communities of Leland and Rose Hill, Mississippi. The stories include include folk and religious tales, jokes, toast telling sessions, and characters from African American oral tradition. Music, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Work, African American Culture / South / 1975 |  |
|
|
|
Lige: Portrait of a Rawhide Braider Henry Elijah "Lige" Langston was born in 1908 in the Great Basin outback on a homestead. He worked his entire life as a wrangler and rawhide braider in the region known as the Sagebrush Corner of northeastern California and northwestern Nevada. Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Work, Rural Life / West / 1985 |  |
|
|
|
Powerhouse for God Powerhouse for God is a portrait of an old-fashioned Baptist preacher John Sherfy, his family, and their church in Virginia's northern Blue Ridge Mountains. Audiences who were born and raised among old-time southern Baptists say this film captures the fierce preaching, determined singing, autobiographical witnessing, and stern doctrine that characterizes these religious communities. Religion / Appalachia / 1989 |  |
|
|
|
Ray Lum: Mule Trader Ray Lum (1891--1977) was a mule skinner, a livestock trader, an auctioneer, and an American original. Narrative & Verbal Arts, Work, Agriculture / South / 1972 |  |
|
|
|
Red Alexander: Shipwright and Folk Artist This video documents the passions of 80 year old "Red" Alexander: building ships (both model and real), wood working, and story telling. Red was encouraged by the sale of one of his first model ships to one of his school teachers. In 1934 he joined the Shipwrights, Joiners, and Boat Builders Union - local 1149, in the San Francisco Bay Area. After 46 years of building real ships Red retired in 1980 as dockmaster at the Pacific Drydock in Alameda, Ca. Today his kitchen is a studio where he makes detailed models of all types of ships and boats. Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Aging / West / 1998 |  |
|
|
|
 Remembering Emmanuel Church An oral history of Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Fauquier County, Virginia. The storytellers are masters-all of them members of the congregation from the old farming community tradition of Fauquier County. The stories, funny, sad, and scandalous, are memories of friends and family who are dead and buried in the churchyard. Narrative & Verbal Arts, Religion, Rural Life / Middle Atlantic / 2000 |  |
|
|
|
Remembering The High Lonesome Profiles filmmaker, photographer, artist, and musician John Cohen. The film examines the birth of a new artistic ethic and counterculture through John Cohen's involvement with the Beat Generation, abstract expressionist painters, and the Folk Music Revival, and it explores the role of an outsider documenting the life and arts of an Appalachian community. Music, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Folkmusic RevivalAppalachia / 2003 / |  |
|
|
|
Sonny Terry: Shoutin' the Blues Shot in 1969, SHOUTIN' THE BLUES is a one shot, one story and one song short film of harmonica great, Sonny Terry. Seated in a motel room on Broadway in Oakland, California where we filmed him while he was on tour with Brownie McGhee, Sonny, with one small harmonica in his hand, creates a complex and soulful blues solo out of his whooping and hollering, after telling us the story of the context that gave birth to that solo. Music, Narrative & Verbal Arts, African American Culture / South / 1969 |  |
|
|
|
Tales of the Supernatural This film documents a group of teenagers telling urban legends, ghost stories and horror tales. The film explores how teenagers transmit horror stories, what the functions of such stories are for teenagers and the connection between transmission and function in the telling of tales. The film also relates these legends to media images. Narrative & Verbal Arts / West / 1970 |  |
|
|
|
Tommie Bass: A LIfe in the Ridge and Valley Country At the time of his death in 1996, "Tommie" Bass, was probably the most well-known herbalist in the United States. The subject of scholarly and popular books, television features, a front-page essay in the Wall Street Journal, and numerous articles in newspapers and magazines, Tommie Bass lived his entire life in the Ridge and Valley region of Alabama where he devoted himself to "trying to give ease" to the many people who sought his advice.. "Tommie Bass" is a biographical portrait of Mr. Bass, told almost entirely in his own words. Healing & Medicine, Healing & Medicine, Narrative & Verbal Arts, Rural Life / South / 1993 |  |
|
|
|
When My Work Is Over: The Life and Stories of Miss Louise Anderson, 1921-1994 The gifted African American storyteller Louise Anderson (1921-1994) tells her family stories and folk tales, and recites poetry in this film taped in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in the last years of her life. Her sisters Evelyn Anderson and Dorothy McLeod join Louise in recalling their experiences growing up in the South, working in restaurants and as domestics in white households, and struggling for civil rights in the early 1960s. Narrative & Verbal Arts, Women, Work, Costume/Dress, Aging, African American Culture, Social Justice/Protest / South / 2000 |
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Brasov
Zoetermeer, Zuid-Holland
Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u69w3_AZaejtLitsK_fM5pm2Q56XaH9LsAcZ9p1GFP2JG73XZ4FN8y1TOLxHqnzZuEl3b_9VIQqAefF_y0llV6OTNa44C3_tLYk3Kh5kQBIbA0mv3uQ0Bgg489wTvLNZdaXzuoWPRsEVdn6eGV8bfd=s0-d)
