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Featured Film
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Blow the Tannery Whistle: A Western North Carolina Story Cary Carden's story of growing up in the town of Sylva in western North Carolina.
34 minutes | Read More |
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Amazing Grace
Across time, oceans and cultures, "Amazing Grace" has endured as one of the most popular pieces of music in the English language. Its universal appeal inspired the acclaimed journalist Bill Moyers to tell the story of this song through the people who have sung it. The complete film is available on high quality DVD from Amazon. / Any / 1990
01 hour, 10 minutes | Read More
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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
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| The Angel That Stands By Me: Minnie Evans' Paintings |
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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
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Ave Maria: The Story of the Fisherman’s Feast
Documents one of the most important traditions of Boston's Italian-Americans: the annual celebration of the Feast of the Madonna del Soccorso, popularly known as the Fisherman's Feast.
Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Religion, Festivals/Customs, Urban Life / Northeast / 1986
27 minutes | Read More
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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
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| Black Delta Religion |
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| Bodhidharma's Shoe |
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The Cradle is Rocking
George "Kid Shiek" Colar and the Olympia Brass Band are featured in this rare film about New Orleans Jazz, directed by Frank DeCola.
Music, Religion, African American Culture / South / 1968
12 minutes | Read More
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Fannie Bell Chapman: Gospel Singer
Film of the singer/faith healer and folk artist Fannie Bell Chapman from Centreville, Mississippi. Footage includes Chapman and her family singing and praying during church services and at home, a healing service at the Chapman home, and Chapman "speaking in tongues" after
healing.
Healing & Medicine, Religion, Women, African American Culture / South / 1975
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Give the World a Smile
For generations, the Schuyler family has lived and farmed around the Lowgap Community in North Carolina, and for generations they have produced singers who led revival meetings, attended singing schools, performed at old-time day-long singings, and sang in countless churches.
Music, Religion, Work, Agriculture, Family / South / 1981
26 minutes | Read More
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Home of the Double Headed Eagle
The home of the Double-Headed Eagle is a kaleidoscopic work of visionary architecture created by the Reverend H. D. Dennis and his wife, Margaret Dennis. A 2006 film made by folklore graduate student Ali Colleen Neff and filmmaker Brian Graves.
Arts, Visionary and Outsider, Aging, African American Culture / South / 2006
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| In Jesus' Name: Taking Up Serpents |
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| In the Rapture |
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J. B. Murray: Writing in Unknown Tongues: Reading through the Water
J. B. Murray (1908-1988) was a farmer who lived in rural Glascock County, Georgia, near the community of Mitchel. When he was approximately seventy years of age, believing he had experienced a vision from God, he began writing a non discursive script on adding machine tape, wall board, and stationery. He described it as "the language of the Holy Spirit, direct from God" and interpreted it using a bottle of water as a focusing device.
Arts, Visionary and Outsider, African American Culture / South / 1986
09 minutes | Read More
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Joy Unspeakable
Joy Unspeakable examines the question, what does it mean to be Pentecostal, through the documentation of three types of Oneness Pentecostal services in Southern Indiana: a gospel-rock concert, a regular Sunday service, and a camp meeting. Religious behavior, doctrine, and social values are discussed by several Oneness Pentecostal church members and ministers in interviews interspersed with footage of the various services. A film by John Winninger and folklorists Elaine Lawless and Betsy Peterson.
Religion, Women / Midwest / 1981
59 minutes | Read More
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Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden
A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden was the first film to document the
klezmer revival, tracing the efforts of two founding groups, Kapelye and Boston's
Klezmer Conservatory Band, to recover the lost history of klezmer music. A Michal Goldman film.
Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Music, Urban Life, Folkmusic Revival / Northeast / 1987
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The Men Who Dance the Giglio
A documentary on the Brooklyn St. Paulinus Festival. This film explores ethnicity, cultural traditions, and religious devotion as the performers, participants, and community members explain the significance of the festival.
Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Festivals/Customs, Urban Life / Northeast / 1995
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Moveable Feast
This documentary follows a group of Italian-Americans from Boston's North End to their ancestral hometown, Sciacca, Sicily, to participate in the Feast of the Madonna del Soccorso (also known and celebrated in Boston as the Fisherman's Feast)
Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Religion, Festivals/Customs / Northeast / 1993
29 minutes | Read More
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My Town: Mio Paese
Shot on location in Palermiti and the Boston area of Massachusetts, MY TOWN/MIO PAESE shows the family, cultural and religious ties between immigrants and their paesani in Southern Italy. The documentary features La Festa della Madonna della Luce (the feast of the Madonna of Light) in both countries and the story of the patron saint’s legendary miracles as told by three generations of Italians and Italian-Americans.
Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Religion, Festivals/Customs, Urban Life / Northeast / 1986
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Old Believers
Hixon's film documents a real-life wedding in the Old Believer settlements of Marion County, Oregon, in the years 1979 and 1980. The film briefly touches on a wealth of traditional arts (embroidery, clothing construction, weaving, vernacular architecture, folk song and foodways) and beautifully presents a whole series of rituals -- the "devichnik" (engagement party), "selling" the bride and her braid, the wedding feast, the bargaining over the dowry, and the ceremony of bestowing gifts and advice to the newlyweds. In English and Russian with subtitles or voice-over translations.
Arts & Crafts, Traditional, Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Religion, Women, Costume/Dress, Family, Festivals/Customs / West / 1981
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People Who Take Up Serpents
Members of a branch of the Holiness churches who base their religious beliefs and practices on Bible verses, especially Mark 16:18. The members handle serpents, hold fire to their bodies, speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick and cast out devils. Healing & Medicine, Religion / Appalachia / 1974
36 minutes | Read More
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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
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| The Rapture Family |
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Rebuilding the Temple: Cambodians in America
After fleeing their country and the Khmer Rouge, this one hour documentary examines the Cambodian refugees' efforts to adjust to Western life and the significant role played by the Buddhist culture in this difficult process
Customs, Ethnic & Immigrant Cultures, Religion, Festivals/Customs, Asian American Culture / Any / 1991
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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
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| The Shakers |
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A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle
The story of a gifted African American family from the rural South. With interviews and stories, and scenes from daily life, reunions, gospel concerts, and church services, the film traces the history of the Landis family of Granville County, North Carolina, over the lifetime of its oldest surviving member, 86-year-old Mrs. Bertha M. Landis.
Music, Religion, Women, Family, Aging, African American Culture, Social Justice/Protest / South / 1986
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Sweet Is the Day: A Sacred Harp Family Portrait
The story of the Woottens of Sand Mountain, Alabama, one of the key singing families who have helped Sacred Harp music survive and flourish for more than 150 years. The video explores how Sacred Harp singing is about more than just music - it is a life-shaping force, reflected by tradition, deep spiritual belief, and the community that embraces it.
Music, Religion, Family / Appalachia / 2001
59 minutes | Read More
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| The Urban Gospel Ministry of Robert and Lily Butler |
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We Shall Not Be Moved: A history of the Tillery resettlement community
During the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was supposed to give sharecroppers a chance at land ownership. But for Black farmers in Tillery, North Carolina, government intervention only added to their long struggle for economic and social justice. African American Culture, Social Justice/Protest / South / 2007
46 minutes | Read More
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Well Known Stranger: Howard Finster's Workout
Well Known Stranger: Howard Finster's Workout takes an intimate look at artist Howard Finster as he conducts a workshop or a "workout" as he calls it, at Mountain Lake, Virginia. Finster talks at length about his many and varied methods of art making. He also sings and picks a mean banjo
Religion, Arts, Visionary and Outsider / Appalachia / 1987
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