Arts & Crafts, Traditional Films

Short film about Jesse Marsolais who works in old ways – traditional methods of letterpress printing and letter carving in stone and wood – to meet customers’ needs one letter at…

Short film featuring master wooden boat builder Harold A. Burnham. Shot both in the Burnham ship yard and on the water, the film touches on shipbuilding in Essex, the Burnham…

Demonstration of and commentary on the mountain craft of building wooden farm sleds by Ott Blair, a native of Heaton, North Carolina. Discussion includes first selling sled and…

The freshwater pearl industry once flourished along Indiana's inland waterways. The Wabash, flowing south from Lafayette to join the Ohio at Mt. Vernon, bustled with the shallow…

Portrait of Albert "Hap" Collins of South Blue Hill, Maine. Hap Collins was a poet, painter, fiddler, lobster fisherman, storyteller, and craftsman.

In 1979 Keir Cline shot footage at the Tenth Annual National Hollerin’ Contest in Spivey’s Corner, a small crossroads community in southeastern North Carolina. The festival had…

A portrait of six older Americans, each with their roots in a unique cultural heritage and each with a powerful perspective on the nature of aging.

A 1973 film of Alex Stewart, a mountain craftsman from near Sneedville, Tennessee, constructing a churn. Film includes discussion of the use of non-powered tools and skills handed…

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…

This documentary shows the inspiration behind Inuit sculpture. The Inuit approach to the work is to release the image the artist sees imprisoned in the rough stone. The film…

This documentary shows how an Inuit artist's drawings are transferred to stone, printed and sold. Kenojuak Ashevak became the first woman involved with the printmaking…

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…

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…

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…

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…