About the Film
Folklife in the hill country of northern Mississippi in the early 1970s is depicted through scenes from Hal Waldrip's small-town general store, a demonstration of Arthur Otha Turner's molasses making using mule power, a portrait of blacksmith Marion Randolph Hall whose shop was established in 1910, and performances of fife and drum music.
In the early 21st century, filmmaker Michael Ford—who passed away in 2025—returned to the locations he originally documented in his 1974 film. His revisitation culminated in a book of photographs, published jointly by the Library of Congress and the University of Georgia Press (see reference below).
