Folk Americana

Folk songgs are everybody''s songs, music learned first-hand from family and friends, and passed on person to person, from generation to generation. In these songs are the oral history of America, our tradition, our feelings, our sufferings and joys. We are thinkful that there were devoted songcatchers who saw the significance and beauty of this music, who not only recorded the sounds, but also the sights, of last remaining echoes of this untouched authenticity. These filmmmakers and musicologists understood and appreciated that long befor we worshipped false American Idols, we listened to the root and heard the trees singing songs of the sea.


John Cohen Films
A founding member of the ''50s folk troupe the New Lost City Ramblers, John Cohen started making films in order to bring together the two disciplines he was heaviry active in: music and photography. His first film , THE HIGH LONESOME sound, is a love letter to Appalachia and features the amazing banjo picker Roscoe Holcomb as the ancor for this gem of cultural anthropology. Next, THE END OF AN OLD SONG brings us to North California and demonstrates the power of old English ballads sung with gusto while soused in a salon. Sara and Maybelle is a rare filmed performance of the two titular members of the Carter Family, Musical Holbouts in an expansive survey of American musical subcultures that steadfastly refuse to be blanded by meamstream consciousness, and Post Industrial Fiddle explores the importance of music-making in the life of a pulp mill worker in rurar Maine. All deceptively simple, but profound stuff.

HOOTENANNY HOOT!
Far avway from the smoky boho coffee klatches of N.Y., wild college kids of the early 60s had their own fun singing and dancing down by the river in bikinis and short shorts at hootenannies, big jam sessions with great musicians. These were taken so seriously that B-movie modul Sam Katzman (Rock around the Clock) capitalized on the phenomenon with Hootennanny Hoot. In it, two randy Madison Ave. ad men travel up the Hudson River Valley in search of fresh faces and become betwixt''d by the Hoot.The frivolity is fun and goes down easy,but the reasons not to miss HH are the key performances: Johnny Cash sings "Frankie and Johnny" from out of the back seat of his car, Judy Henske ("Queen of the Beatniks") taps the root and awakens the best within for "Wade In The Water", and suggestive ballads by Joe and Eddie hint at how the times would be a-changing

FILK SHORTS BY LES BLANK
Les Blank spent nearly 15 years documenting on film the tastes, sounds and rituals of both regional America and points abroad. His singular freewheeling viewpoints of celebrating "simple,loving people of the Earth" has garnered him countless awards, including AFI''s Maya Deren Award for Outstanding Lifetime Achivement in 1990. THE BLUES ACCORDIN'' TO LIGHTNIN'' HOPKINS is a loving portrait of blues legend Hopkins, serving a heaping helping of live performances at both a community barbeque in his hometown of Centerville , Texas, and an all-black rodeo.THE SUN''S GONNA SHINE is a brief lyrical recreation of Hopkins'' deecision at age eight to stop chopping cotton and start singing for a living, and SPROUT WINGS AND FLY is a poignant tribute to Appalachian fiddler Tommy Jarrell, whose unpretentious folk wisdom is interlaced with family scenes and reminiscences, plus plenty of old-time music.

Video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcVbNaiBZCU

ALAN LOMAX: SONGHUNTER
"I though of Alan as a Minotaur - half man, half supernatural - who defied life as we know it." - Bill Ferris, friend of Alan Lomax. Known as the "song hunter", Alan Lomax was one of the world''s most prolific and well-known musicologist and folklorist. He is most famous for his recordings from the deep South in the ''30s, ''40s, and ''50s at penitentiaries, plantations, and farms of the Mississippi Delta. He also traveled expensively throughout the U.S., the Caribbean, Europe, and North Africa capturing live field performances, and helped to establish the library of Congress'' Archive of American Folk Song,.Tonight, we celebrate Lamax''s career by showing a Dutch documentary on his career, as well as selections from his own incredible film archive, including footage of the NEW LOST CITY RAMBLERS AT CARNEGIE HALL, WILLIE DIXON, HOWLING WOLF.

THE OLD, WEIRD AMERICA: HARRY SMITH''S ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC
Imagine a world without rock and roll, or without that obsessive breed of cultural anthropology that favors the margins over the center. That''s the world you''d get without Harry Smith. No one better anticipated the sea change of the ''60s and its post-revolutionary landscape that this son of Theosophists, experimental filmmaker, Native American ethnographer, alchemical evangelist, speed freak, town crier and collector extraordinaire. His three-volume Anthology of American Folk Music, with its archive of "blues singers, hillbilly musicians and gospel chanters, "in the words of Greil Marcus (whose Old Weird America lends its title), launched Bob Dylan, the GratefulDead and the folkrevival of the early ''60s, just for starters. This loving portrait by Rani Singh, Smith''s one time assistant and co-curator of his archives, blends biography with concert footage of Beck, Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Nick Cave and other musical archaeologist performing songs from theAnthology, to capture the lifeof one of America''ssaints.

CELEBRATION AT BIG SUR
In 1971, everyone did it. And they did it for love. Filmed at the legendary West Coast philosophical retreat The esalen Institute (which gave birth to EST and which counted Henry Miller as a regular guest), the very rarely -screened Celebration at Big Sur is a terrific document of this formerly annual concert, featuring the sounds of CSNY, Joan Baez and her sister Mimi farina, Dorothy Morrison, john Sebastian and Joni Mitchl,all performing on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Like woodstock, the Celebration was a free festival that had major quirks that made for great filmic moments. Highlights include Steven Stills getting into a fight with a heckler, experimental Jordan Belson-like bits during Joni''s piano playing, and Devid Crosby skinny-dipping with Carl Gottlieb (the film''s producer and the co-writer of jaws) in the infamous Esalen baths while chanting up a storm. Purify yourself at the sea of madness!

Lighnin Hopkins
Howlin'' Wolf
John Cohen works
HOOTENANNY HOOT! - video
Disco Dschinghis Khan