|
Featured Film
|
|
|
Morgan Sexton: Bull Creek Banjo Player Eastern Kentucky's Morgan Sexton cut his first banjo out of the bottom of a lard bucket, and some seventy years later won the National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Award for his "amazingly pure and unaffected singing and playing style." In this program, the eighty-year-old Sexton shares his life and music.
28 minutes | Read More | Preview |
|
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison |
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
The Amish: A People of Preservation
The Amish keep surprising their technology-programmed neighbors by keeping alive ways and beliefs that many modern Americans wish they could recapture. Mennonite historian John Ruth takes us sympathetically into the Amish mindset. Religion, Work, Agriculture, Children, Family, Rural Life, Aging / Middle Atlantic / 1975
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
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
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Ben's Mill: Making a Sled
Ben Thresher's mill is one of the few water-powered, wood-working mills left in this country. Operating in rural Vermont since 1848, the mill is a unique link between the age of craft and the age of modern industry.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Work, Regional / Northeast / 1981
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
| Carnival Train |
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Cowboy Poets
American cowboys have been writing poetry for more than a century. Cowboy Poets profiles three cowboy reciters--Waddie Mitchell, Slim Kite and Wally McRae--representing three different aspects of the cowboy-poetry tradition. A Kim Shelton film.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Narrative & Verbal Arts / West / 1988
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
| Crawdad Slip |
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
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
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Final Marks: The Art of the Carved Letter
A documentary about lettercutting, in both monumental inscriptions and on gravestones. The filmmakers were given complete access over a two year period to the work of the craftsmen of the John Stevens Shop in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest business in the United States still in continuous operation in the same colonial building. It chronicles the work of John ‘Fud’ Benson, then the owner and principal designer, and, arguably, one of the most accomplished letter cutters in the world.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Work / Northeast / 1979
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Finnish American Lives
A 1982 portrait of traditional Finnish American culture in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, highlighting the fragile community of memory connecting one with parents and grandparents. A Michael Loukinen production from Up North Films.
Customs, Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Work, Family / Midwest / 1982
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
| Fishing All My Days: Florida Shrimping Traditions |
|
||||
|
|
|||||
| Gandy Dancers |
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Going, Going, Going
Going, Going, Going tells the story of aspiring auctioneer Mark Kuhn and how he learns his craft. Rural life is at the heart of the livestock's heritage and chosen profession. Going, Going, Going shows how the auctioneer pursuing this career fares among the shifting sands of today's disappearing rural world.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Work, Agriculture, Rural Life / Pacific Northwest / 1990
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Kathleen Ware, Quiltmaker
From the placing of an order to the completion of the last stitch, the film details the entire process of creating a traditional Lone Star quilt. As the quilt grows, so does our knowledge of Kathleen Ware's vibrant spirit as quiltmaker, wife, mother, and grandmother. A film by Sharon Sherman.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Women, Aging / Pacific Northwest / 1979
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Learned it in Back Days and Kept It: A Portrait of Lucreaty
Portrait of Lucreaty Clark (1903 - 1986), an African American oak basket maker from rural Florida. Clark embraced a wide repertoire of traditional African American songs, games and folk knowledge essential to rural life. She was a remarkable representative of an era that seems very far away today.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Play, Rural Life, Aging, African American Culture / South / 1981
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Our Lives in Our Hands
This 1986 film examines the traditional Native American craft of split ash basketmaking as a means of economic and cultural survival for Aroostook Micmac Indians of northern Maine. This documentary of rural off-reservation Indian artisans aims to break down stereotypical images. Basketmakers are filmed at their craft in their homes, at work on local potato farms and at business meetings of the Basket Bank, a cooperative formed by the Aroostook Micmac Council. First person commentaries are augmented by authentic 17th century Micmac music.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Work, Rural Life, Native American / Northeast / 1986
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Pilebutts: Working Under the Hammer
A union-produced documentary about pile drivers, courageous men and women better known as "pilebutts," who secure structures like bridges and skyscrapers to the earth. Pilebutts weaves history and folklore into a modern story of individuals doing tough, often dangerous industrial work.
Work / West / 2003
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
The Pirogue Maker
In 1948, Robert Flaherty was working on "The Louisiana Story." He was searching for a small boat, or "pirogue" for his young hero. Flaherty soon became aware that pirogue-making was a disappearing art. Finally, when he found Abdon Allemon, a Cajun craftsman, he persuaded him to make the pirogue. It may well have been the last piroque made in Louisiana. This is a record of that event.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional / South / 1949
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Quilts in Women's Lives
Quilts was a ground breaking film used by folklorists, anthropologists and historians of art and womens history that presented the lives, art, work and philosophy of ordinary women in the days when few documentaries came from women filmmakers. This deceptively simple film won most of the major awards for independent films during the years after its release in 1981, including Emily Grand Prize, American Film Festival; 1st Place Fine Arts, San Francisco International Film Festival; Best of Festival, National Educational Film and Video Festival, New York International Film Festival, Margaret Mead Film Festival.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Women / West / 1981
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
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
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
The Sea Bright Skiff: Working on the Jersey Shore
The Sea Bright-style skiff dates back to the mid 1800s along the North Jersey Shore. Charles Hankins still hand-crafts these boats of New Jersey cedar and green oak, though they no longer serve as fishing vessels. He demonstrates the process of building the skiff, step by step.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Work / Middle Atlantic / 1991
28 minutes | Read More
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Spirits in the Wood: The Chainsaw Art of Skip Armstrong
An in-depth portrait of a man, his art, his philosophy, and his creative process, this work cuts across folk and fine art boundaries to explore the energized world and works of chainsaw artist J. Chester "Skip" Armstrong. Skip describes the forces that drive him: "The chainsaw allows you that moment of thinking translated immediately into the act of creating."
Arts & Crafts, Traditional / Pacific Northwest / 1991
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Stoney Knows How
Stoney Knows How is an extended interview with 'Stoney' St. Clair, an ebullient little man with the gift of gab of a circus tout and a fund of bizarre stories about tattooing and other matters. One of these is the tale of a Florida snake handler and tattoo artist who was squeezed to death by his own python. His widow made a fortune touring the South with the guilty snake. "After all," says Stoney, "how often do you get a chance to see a snake that's squeezed a man to death?" Not often, nor does one often have the opportunity to meet a man like Stoney. The filmmakers treat him with respect, fondness and appreciation, and he responds in kind. Vincent Canby, The New York Times.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Aging / South / 1981
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
This Is Our Slaughterhouse
This 22 minute documentary follows the ten workers of Broerman Poultry Processing, revealing their surprisingly close relationships, despite the gruesome nature of their job. The colorful interviews and raw supporting footage give new perspectives on family values, hard work, and what happens inside a slaughterhouse. The film was made by Matthew Broerman, a son of the owner of the slaughterhouse.
Work, Family, Rural Life / Midwest / 2000
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Water From Another Time
A film document of three elderly residents of Orange County, Indiana. Featured in the film are musician Lotus Dickey, clock builder and tinkerer Elmer Boyd, and self-taught artist Lois Doane.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Music, Women, Arts, Visionary and Outsider, Aging / Midwest / 1982
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Why The Cowboy Sings
The cowboy's job has always been dangerous, lonely, dusty, gory and low-paying. So why do cowboys make music, and why do they need to tell their story? Why the Cowboy Sings is a journey across the open West to explore this unique genre of folk art. Music, Work, Rural Life, Native American / West / 2002
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Wild Caught: The Life and Struggles of an American Fishing Town
WILD CAUGHT chronicles the lives of fisherman carrying out small scale, sustainable commercial fishing in the town of Snead's Ferry, North Carolina, and their struggles to keep afloat amidst a rising tide of cheap imports, stifling regulations, and coastal real estate development interests.
Work, Sports/Hunting, Social Justice/Protest / South / 2006
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
With These Hands: The Story of an American Furniture Factory
In March 2007, unable to compete with cheaper offshore production, Hooker Furniture Company closed its plant in Martinsville, Virginia, after 83 years in operation. “With These Hands” follows the last load of kiln-dried wood down the assembly line as it is cut, honed, and assembled into fine furniture. Along the way, employees at the factory share their perspectives on work, community, and survival in a country devastated by deindustrialization and outsourcing.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Work, Social Justice/Protest / South / 2009
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
Woodsmen and River Drivers
Men and women who worked for the Machias Lumber Company before 1930 share their recollections of the logging industry in Maine when they cut trees by hand, hauled logs to the river with horses, and floated them down to the mill. Remarkable documentary footage from the 1930's illustrate this dangerous and exhausting work.
Work, Regional, Rural Life / Northeast / 1989
|
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
Visit the VAFP - visual aids to film preservation.