Work Films

On an island the road ends where it begins, at the wharf. The wharf is the link to the rest of the world, until winter cuts it off. But the islanders know the winter sea and its…

Boom and Bust is a meditation on economic cycles and the American Dream. This remarkable film tells the story of industrial expansion and decline along the Erie Canal, and…

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…

The former coal town of Widen, West Virginia. Once a model of paternalistic domination, Widen had been sold to the Pittston corpration in 1963.

The Virginia Peanut Story tells the rise and fall of the dominance of the Virginia/Carolina peanut industry. Aided by returning Union soldiers after the Civil War, railroads and…

Half-hour folk art look at the poetry, songs, crafts and festivals of Northwest loggers. Aired 1987. Won PMN “Best of the West” award, Cultural Documentary, 1988. Funded by…

With verve and humor, this film shows the love/hate relationship that women have with the task of cleaning the family's clothes. As we see the clothes flapping in the wind and…

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…

This short documentary offers a dizzying view of the Mohawk Indians of Kahnawake who work in Manhattan erecting the steel frames of skyscrapers.

People's Stuff is a document of six collectors of unusual objects. Creating an environment for storytelling, the subjects reveal inner dreams and motivations as they share both…

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

A behind the scenes look to see how the magic of the midway comes together, town after town, and how carnies create a community and way of life that transcends place and time.

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…

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…