Directory of Productions

At the River I Stand

Grantee: Memphis State University
Project Director: Steven J. Ross
SHMF Award (1991): $46,432

An award-winning documentary, River focuses on the Memphis sanitation strike of 1968. Although usually remembered as the struggle which culminated in the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the strike is also significant as a watershed event in the Civil Rights movement. This dramatic, hour-long film was the first to render the specifics of the strike in detail, and to examine those details within a larger social/historical context. The program has been called “a piece of gripping storytelling” and “one of the most clear-headed, even-handed documentaries about the Civil Rights movement.”

Nationally aired on PBS; Best Documentary, Sinking Creek Film Celebration, 1994; 1994 Eric Barnouw Award, Organization of American Historians; nominated for NAACP’s Image Award, 1994.

Information:
Steven J. Ross, Department of Communications,
University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152. (901) 678-3182

Beyond Measure: Appalachian Culture and Economy

Grantee: Appalshop, Inc.
Project Director: Herb E. Smith
SHMF Award (1993): $32,000

Focusing on the interplay between culture and economy in the Appalachian region, this documentary examines both the dramatic economic change that has taken place over the past 200 years and the persistence of continuities within that change. The one-hour film explores four characteristic features of economic life in the Appalachian region: hunting and gathering, subsistence farming, industrialization, and government support.

Kentucky Educational Television has broadcast the film. Festivals and special screenings include the Robert Flaherty Seminar, the Southern Circuit Tour, the West Virginia International Film Festival, the Margaret Meade Film Festival, and the American Museum of Natural History.

Information:
David Reynolds, Appalshop, Inc.
91 Madison Avenue, Whitesburg, KY 41858
(606) 633-0108 / appalshopsales@appalshop.org
www.appalshop.org

Big Jim Folsom: The Two Faces of Populism

Grantee: Foundation for New Media
Project Director: Robert Clem
SHMF Award (1993): $68,500

The history and politics of the South in the years following the Second World War, at the threshold of the enormous changes of the 1960s, is the focus of this film. The 85-minute program uses the controversial career of Alabama governor James E. “Big Jim” Folsom, along with that of his one-time follower George Wallace, to explore the clash between issues of class, championed by Folsom, and the politics of race that Wallace and the majority of Southern politicians adopted in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Premiered on Alabama Public Television in July 1996.

Information:
Robert Clem, Foundation for New Media
210 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030
(201) 222-3737 / frontpix@mindspring.com

Blood Memory: The Legend of Beanie Short

Grantee: Kentucky Film Artists’ Coalition
Project Director: Robby Henson
SHMF Award (1992): $18,125

Exploring the persistence of local storytelling traditions that stem from the Civil War, this hour-long video focuses on the legend of Confederate raider Beanie Short, who conducted a guerilla campaign in and around Turkey Neck Bend, in the remote Kentucky-Tennessee border country. Aired on KY-TV.
Information: Robby Henson, Cicada Film Productions,

8 Weehawken Street, New York, NY 10025. (212) 645-7386

Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life

Grantee: Image Film and Video
Project Director: Meg Partridge
SHMF Award (1991): $25,831

A Visual Life is a one-hour film on photographer Dorothea Lange, whose photographs — chronicling the debilitating effects of the American Depression, the tragic uprooting of dustbowl farmers, and the shameful relocation of the Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II — became cultural icons and provided visual evidence for needed social reform. The film includes over three-hundred and fifty of Lange’s memorable images, including selections from her later work, a lyrical testament to the oneness of all humanity.

Information:
Meg Partridge
meg@megpartridge.com / www.MegPartridge.com

Distribution:
Pacific Pictures, P.O. Box 218, Lopez, WA 98261
(800) 886-3135 / (360) 202-6352 outside U.S.

Edgar Allan Poe: Architect of Dreams

Grantee: University of Richmond
Project Director: Jean Mudge
SHMF Award (1990): $30,000

Drawing on archival materials and featuring historic locales, this 30-minute documentary with dramatic episodes explores Poe’s reliance on dream imagery and narratives of dreaming as a way of evoking the hidden nature of the universe, first in his poems, then in his stories.

Information:
Jean Mudge, Viewfinder Films
2444 Hillside Avenue, Berkeley, CA 97704
(510) 548-7268

A Faulkner Radio Centennial

Grantee: Foundation for New Media
Project Director: Robert E. Clem
SHMF Award (1996): $30,000

Each episode in this series of three, one-hour radio programs takes its shape from one of Faulkner’s short stories. Hosted by Stacy Keach, the first hour focuses on Faulkner’s humor and includes a dramatization of Faulkner’s classic story ‘Spotted Horses,’ with Will Patton, John Glover, Lois Smith, and Betty Buckley in the cast. The second program looks at Faulkner’s work outside the Yoknapatwapha cycle, including his sojourn in Hollywood. Here the dramatized story is the romantic flying tale ‘Honor,’ with Campbell Scott, Hope Davis, and Academy Award winner Michael O’Keefe. The final hour-long program discusses race and gender in Faulkner’s work, dramatizing the post-Civil War story ‘Mountain Victory,’ featuring David Strathairn, Jeffery Wright and William Fichtner. Wraparound interviews include Shelby Foote, Michael Harper, Mary Lee Settle, George Garrett, and several Faulkner scholars.

The program was broadcast on NPR and in fifty-five countries worldwide in the fall
of 1997.

Information:
Robert E. Clem, Foundation for New Media
210 Bloomfield Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030
(201) 222-3737 / frontpix@mindspring.com

Freedom On My Mind

Grantee: Delta Foundation
Project Directors: Connie Field & Marilyn Mulford
SHMF Award (1990): $50,000

This two-hour documentary brings to life the dramatic story of the Mississippi Voter Registration Project (1961-1964) and the many individuals committed to racial justice who ultimately created the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The film focuses on two groups: the courageous local Mississippi sharecroppers and the equally courageous young organizers who worked with them. The Freedom Summer effort of 1964 is at the heart of the film, which recalls the strategic brilliance of the organizers, who brought 1,000 white college students from around the nation to join them in their historic and fateful work.

Nominated for a 1994 Academy Award, Best Feature Documentary; winner Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, Sundance Film Festival, 1994; Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award, National Educational Film Festival, 1994; John O’Connor Award, American Historical Association, 1995; Erik Barnouw Award, Organization of American Historians, 1995; 1996 National Education Association Award for Advancement of Learning through Broadcasting; Cine Golden Eagle, 1997.

Information:
Connie Field or Marilyn Mulford, Clarity Educational Productions 2600 Tenth Street, Suite 142, Berkeley, CA 94710 ConField@aol.com or Mulfordm@aol.com

Distribution:
California Newsreel
149 Ninth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 621 6196
contact@newsreel.org / http://www.newsreel.org

Gandy Dancers: The Last of the Southern Black Railroad Crews

Grantee: Georgia State University, Special Collections
Project Director: Robert C. Dinwiddie
SHMF Award (1991): $40,000

A 30-minute film documenting the skills and work songs of an occupational group unique to the South – the “gandy dancers.” The physical movements of these railroad crew members were synchronized by a “caller” who sang work chants, ensuring safety and pacing while spiritually uplifting the men at their toil. Dr. William Ferris, past Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has described the film as “a beautiful, moving portrait of a musical tradition central to the history and culture of the American South.”

The film has been aired on the PBS series Point of View and has also been shown at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival in Arkansas.

Information:
Maggie Holtzberg
(617) 727 3668 / maggie.holtzberg@art.state.ma.us

Distribution:
The Cinema Guild,
130 Madison Avenue, 2nd Floor,
New York, NY 10016-7038
(212) 685-6242 / www.cinemaguild.com

God’s Will

Grantee: University of Alabama Center for Public TV
Project Director: Michael Letcher
SHMF Award (1997): $20,000

Narrated by Ossie Davis, this hour-long film explores the life, character, and commitments of the legendary Will Campbell, presenting him as both an articulate and authentic thinker and a Southern enigma, a puzzle of a personality. A Mississippi backwoods Baptist preacher, Campbell is also a Yale-educated, white intellectual who sheltered nine black children from a Little Rock mob. His friends have included members of the Ku Klux Klan, yet he was also the only white person at the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the ACLU. With commentary by John Egerton, James Lawson, Jules Feiffer, Stokely Carmichael, Waylon Jennings, John Lewis, John Shelton Reed, Jessi Colter, and Jimmy Carter, the program follows Campbell’s career from a small rural church to the University of Mississippi, to the National Council of Churches in Nashville, and to an independent back-to-basics Christianity. Throughout his career, Campbell has viewed Civil Rights as a radical Christian commitment to genuine brotherhood. His later thinking emphasizes how institutions and their dogmas divide ordinary people and hamper the work of reconciliation.

The film has been aired by PBS and Alabama Public Television.

Information:
Michael Letcher
(205) 348-6210 / Mletcher@cpt.ua.edu

Distribution:
The University of Alabama Center for Public Television and Radio
Box 870150, Tuscaloosa, AL 25487
(800) 463-8825

Hoxie: The First Stand

Grantee: University of Memphis
Project Director: David Appleby
SHMF Award (1999): $45,000

This hour-long video documentary explores one of the earliest, most important, and least-remembered school integration battles in the South. The program raises important questions about the persistence of popular images and stereotypes in national representations of the Civil Rights movement. In the summer of 1955, the superintendent and five school board members of Hoxie, Arkansas, voted unanimously to integrate their public schools, telling reporters “it was morally right in the sight of God.” When LIFE magazine’s coverage of the first day of school focused national attention on the town, segregationist leaders set their sights on Hoxie as the first battle in their campaign against the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. The Hoxie board, isolated and in danger, bravely stood up to all acts of intimidation and refused to step down or rescind their decision. Instead, they sought the help of a local lawyer whose legal strategy ultimately drew a reluctant federal Justice Department into the integration battle and led to the nullification of Arkansas’ segregation laws.

This film was broadcast nationally on PBS and has won a number of national awards including a Peabody Award (2004), an Erik Barnouw Award: Honorary Mention(2004), a CINE Golden Eagle (2003), and a regional EMMY for best writing.

Information:
David Appleby
(901) 678-2569 / Dappleby@memphis.edu

Distribution:
Cinema Guild
130 Madison Ave., Second Floor
New York, New York 10016
1-800-723-5522
www.cinemaguild.com

Jazz is Spoken Here

Grantee: Lightfoot Films
Project Director: David Miller
SHMF Award (1992): $24,889

Through the stories and musical performances of Ellis Marsalis, this video traces the roots of jazz in New Orleans and recalls the careers of the “Crescent City” musicians who made jazz an internationally recognized art form.

Information:
David Miller, Alcorn State University
P.O. Box 1066, Lorman, MS 39096
(601) 877-6602

The Jenkins Orphanage Band

Grantee: South Carolina Educational Television
Project Director: Beryl M. Dakers
SHMF Award (1991): $25,000

An hour-long video documentary on the significance of the Jenkins Orphanage Band, long recognized as a cultural institution within the city of Charleston, SC. The famed band was founded by the Rev. Daniel J. Jenkins in 1892 in order to attract much needed funding for the orphanage. The band went on to perform before royalty, to inspire a playwright, to celebrate the inauguration of a president, and to become world-renowned as the City of Charleston’s “cultural ambassadors.”

The film has been aired on South Carolina Educational Television and is available with a recently completed study guide.

Information:
Beryl Dakers, South Carolina ETV
P.O. Box 11000, Columbia, SC 29211
(803) 737-3344 / dakers@scetv.org

Listening Between the Lines: Races with History

Grantee: Nathan B. Stubblefield Foundation
Project Director: Alan T. Lipke
SHMF Award (1999): $10,000

This five-part, public radio documentary-and-debate series will use eyewitness testimony and a wide range of humanities perspectives to explore how white and black Americans have clashed and struggled to accommodate each other over the generations. The project will deal with violence against African Americans in the South, Asians in California, Latinos in the Southwest, and other immigrants in the North, also covering the rise of legal discrimination – from the Chinese Exclusion Acts to Jim Crow. Programs will explore national attitudes about miscegenation and lynching and will focus on the Reconstruction era, mob rule, and race riots. Topics will include the Klan, the FBI, and popular media, terrorism and the Civil Rights movement, and the origins of today’s militant white-supremacist militias.
“Rosewood Revisited,” the pilot episode in the series, won the Grand Award and Gold World Medal at the International Radio Competition of the New York Festivals. The developing series was recently chosen to receive the Radio-Television News Directors Association’s new Unity Award.

Information:
Alan Lipke, Listening Between the Lines, Inc.
101 E. Crawford Street, Tampa, FL 33604
(813) 236-7787 / atlipke@msn.com

M & M Smith Studios: For Posterity’s Sake

Grantee: Living Arts and Science Center, Lexington, KY
Project Director: Heather Lyons, Lexington, KY
SHMG Award (1994): $29,000

Native Kentuckians, the sons of sharecroppers, Morgan and Marvin Smith moved to Harlem to pursue a better life, becoming painters and muralists with the WPA, and opening a photographic studio. There, for almost forty years, these twin brothers elegantly recorded the social, cultural, and political life of Harlem (among their better- known subjects were Bessie Smith, Langston Hughes, Lena Horne, Adam Clayton Powell, Paul Robeson, and Zora Neale Hurston), while maintaining strong connections with their Kentucky home. This hour-long film presents a personal portrait of the photographers and their lifelong commitment to artistic expression and community activism. The documentary also considers the phenomenal migration of African American writers, artists, and laborers from throughout the South to Harlem.

Broadcast statewide on KET; shown in conjunction with the exhibit “Visual Journal: People and Places,” at the Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C.; national PBS broadcast, February, 1997; winner, SILVER APPLE at the National Educational Media Festival; screened at the Louisville Film and Video Festival and the Big Muddy Film Festival.

Information: Heather Lyons, Producer/Director
P.O. Box 21905, Lexington, KY 40522-1905
(859) 737-3045 / HALyons@aol.com

Distributor: NEW DAY FILMS
22-D Hollywood Avenue, Ho-ho-kus, NJ 07423
(201) 652 6590 / curator@newday.com
www.newday.com

Maxine/The Wilgus Stories

Grantee: North Fork Films/Media Working Group
Project Director: Andrew Garrison
SHMF Award (1995): $20,000

“Maxine” is the third in a series of three 20-minute film adaptations of the short stories of Kentucky writer Gurney Norman. Based on Norman’s book Kinfolks and set in the Kentucky coalfields, The Wilgus Stories follows a young man’s coming of age, from tender youth to early manhood. In the first segment, “Fat Monroe,” Wilgus, played by William Johnson, is nine years old and has run away from home. The boy is picked up by a genially cantankerous redneck, a leg-pulling, tale-spinning Ned Beatty, who gives him a somewhat harrowing ride home in a rust-bucket Chevy pickup. “Night Ride” features Wilgus at age 14, taking off on a joyride with his trouble-making, emotionally confused Uncle Delmer (Taylor) in a cherry-red Chevy sedan. Spurred on by alcohol, Delmer leads Wilgus on a firearm-blasting rite of passage in which he learns more about his father and approaches the cusp of manhood. In “Maxine,” a collegiate Wilgus, on a visit home, spends an evening with an old family friend, portrayed by Robin Mullins. A single mother, she has reluctantly left her newly married daughter with a husband she knows will do her wrong. Delicately moving between their mutual hopes and fears, the characters mourn the loss of a loved-one’s potential as a way to examine losses of their own. The story challenges viewers to re-examine long-standing images of mountain women. The series explores the influence of place, community, and the strengths and stresses of kinship, in a context of economic necessity and changing social roles.

Broadcast on PBS affiliates around the country in August 2000.

Contact:
Andrew Garrison
10501 Hard Rock Road, Austin, TX 78750
(512) 475-6297

Music Masters and Rhythm Kings (Southern Musical Roots)

Grantee: Southern Arts Federation
Project Director: Peggy Bulger
SHMF Award (1992): $25,140

This hour-long performance documentary focuses on three root cultures – African, British, and Caribbean – that nourished three traditional Southern musical traditions: African American blues, Anglo-American Country and Bluegrass, and Afro-Cuban Bembe music. The rich diversity and complexity of Southern musical life is reflected in a tapestry of music, history, and personal reminiscence, featuring such artists as Pappy Sherrill and the Hired Hands (string band music), Eddie Kirkland (Blues), Neal Pattman (Blues), Florencio Baro and Eri Okan (Afro-Cuban music).

Information:
Marsha Killingsworth, PR Manager, Georgia Public Television
260 14th Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30318
(404) 685-2425

Nat Turner – A Troublesome Property

Grantee: Film Arts Foundation
Project Director: Frank Christopher
SHMF Award (1999): $55,000

This 90-minute documentary will plumb the history and legacy of the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831, exploring Turner as a figure of historical and contemporary controversy, drawing on the reflections of artists, social commentators, writers, historians, and other observers. Among those to be interviewed are Henry Louis Gates, Jr., William Styron, David Wolper, Eric Foner, Eugene Genovese, Ossie Davis, Dr. Alvin Poussaint, and Louise Meriweather. Turner himself will be presented through dramatic recreations based on images and words taken from folklore, poetry, novels, and plays, running from his time to the present. The film will center on how the 1967 publication of William Styron’s fictional memoir, The Confessions of Nat Turner, released deep passions and incited bitter debate over issues of race and memory. How can societies preserve memory and address historical meaning, coming to terms with horrific conditions and events that still reverberate in the present? The film will explore such questions, focusing on the possibility of achieving understanding, compassion, and healing.

The project received a Special Jury Prize for Documentary Writing at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.

Information:
Frank Christopher
2860 East Valley Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108
(805) 969-9775

Distribution:
subpix
P.O. Box 50752, Montecito, CA 93150-0752

Oh Freedom After While!

Grantee: University of Memphis
Project Director: Steven J. Ross
SHMF Award (1997): $17,000

Described by one critic as a “modern-day David and Goliath story,” this one-hour film recovers a long-neglected piece of Southern history, the tale of how a coalition of people – black and white, urban and rural – fought for and achieved a measure of racial and economic justice. In 1939, fifteen years before the Civil Rights movement, a poor African American preacher, sharecropper, and union organizer, the Reverend Owen Whitfield, led some fifteen hundred demonstrators in a protracted roadside demonstration against government policy and the injustices perpetrated by landowners. Narrated by Julian Bond, the film explores the strike as an extraordinary example of social action and community-building, an event that forced the nation and the federal government to look long and hard at the plight of thousands of tenant farmers and sharecroppers throughout the South. The program features never-before-seen newsreel footage as well as the exceptional photography of Dorothea Lange, Marian Post-Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, and others.

Nationally broadcast by PBS, Oh Freedom received the Merit Award at the 2000 San Francisco International Film Festival, the Juried Award of Distinction at the 1999 University Film and Video Association National Conference, and the 1999 Independent Film Maker Award at the Nashville Independent Film Festival.

Information:
Steve Ross
(901) 452-6706 / sjross@memphis.edu

Distribution:
California Newsreel
141 Ninth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 621-6196 / (800) 621-6196 / contact@newsreel.org
www.newsreel.org

Raise the Dead

Grantee: Image Film & Video
Project Director: James Ruttenbeck
SHMF Award (1998): $41,000

This is a film about the travels of an itinerant faith healer through the backwoods and small towns of the American South. At age 79, Pentecostal preacher Richard Hall, a life-long veteran of the “sawdust trail,” recalls the overflowing tents and auditoriums of postwar America, but now travels to lonely coal towns, waiting outside neglected storefronts for the gathering of believers. In the early days, Hall traveled with evangelist William Branham, the illiterate son of a bootlegger from rural Kentucky, who became an international leader during the heady revival of the 1940s and ‘50s. Hall’s encounters on the road serve as a window to the people, land, and milieu of a still-misunderstood religious tradition, providing the viewer with first-hand insights that move beyond stereotypic portrayals that have characterized most Pentecostal representations.

Named “Best Independent Film” at the 1999 New England Film Festival, Raise the Dead was screened at the West Virginia International Film Festival, and selected for competition at the 1999 Cinéma du Réel, Paris.

Distribution:
First Run Features and First Run Icarus
153 Waverly Place, New York, NY 10014
(800) 229-8575 / info@firstrunfeatures.com
(718) 488-8900 / info@frif.com

Remembering Slavery

Grantee: Institute of Language and Culture
Project Director: Kathie Farnell
SHMF Award (1997): $40,000

From 1935 to 1941, a number of WPA projects located and interviewed more than three thousand people born under slavery. Hosted by Tonea Stewart, Remembering Slavery consists of two 60-minute radio programs that frame and present some of these recorded ex-slave narratives. Part One focuses on the harsh working and appalling living conditions that slaves endured. In their own words, former slaves recount how they were restricted and abused, recall the consolations of family life and the pain they suffered with the forced dissolution of families, and remember flights to freedom and how runaways were punished. Part Two features former slaves who describe the effects of the Civil War and its aftermath; this section includes a recreation by Richie Havens of a song sung by black volunteer soldiers and a reading by Langston Hughes of his poem “Mother to Son.”

Nationally broadcast by Public Radio International, Remembering Slavery was awarded a Gold World Medal for Best Narration by the New York Festivals Radio Programming Competition and received a 1999 Gabriel Award in the news/informational category from the National Catholic Association for Communicators.

Information:
Kathy Farnell
(334) 277-7937 / kfarnel@cs.com

Distribution:
Public Radio International
(612) 330-9234 / hschultz@pri.org
www.pri.org

Southern Stews

Grantee: McKissick Museum
Project Director: Jay Williams
SHMF Award (2000): $55,000

A candid, somewhat whimsical but nonetheless revealing, look at the communal ritual of stew-making, this program will explore the relationships between the stuff of stews – the ingredients, recipes, and artifacts used in their production – and the social dynamics of stew-making and consumption. Documenting the cooking of traditional Frogmore Stew, Carolina Hash, Kentucky Burgoo, and Fish and Chicken Muddle, the video will examine issues tied to gender, age, and kinship, and the roles they play in stew-making communities. The program will argue that stew-making in disparate communities reflects historical patterns of acculturation, that such foodways develop rich, tangible and intangible, folkloristic elements. Illuminating the effects of the region’s changing social, economic, and political environment on the stew tradition, the video will explore the stew-makers’ passionate commitment to their unique and fragile expressions of cultural heritage.

Information:
Stan Woodward
P.O. Box 5163, Greenville, SC 29606
(864) 284-6422 / woodwardstudio@charter.net

Terror and Triumph/The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

Grantee: Caticus Corporation
Project Director: Richard Wormser
SHMF Award (1998): $35,000

“Terror and Triumph” is both the pilot and final episode of this planned four-part series on the African American struggle for freedom during the period of segregation in the South (1880-1954). The programs will explore how African Americans built their own schools, churches, businesses, and fraternal and social organizations; created cultural institutions; and strove to stabilize family life despite the fact that they were segregated, disenfranchised, and subjected to continual violence. The story is told through the experiences and words of ordinary and extraordinary men and women who never ceased struggling for their rights. Program One, “Jim Crow Comes to Town,” will cover the period from 1880 to 1896, focusing on the efforts of African Americans to achieve the promises of Emancipation for full civil and political rights and the demand by whites for segregation and political exclusion. Program Two, “Was There Ever a Time So Dark?” will explore how African Americans evolved new strategies of survival during the most virulent period of white supremacy between 1896 and 1914. Program Three, entitled “Winds of Change,” will cover the period from 1917 to World War II, focusing especially on the impact of the New Deal on race relations. “Terror and Triumph” focuses on the period between 1941 and 1954, telling the story of how, at the grassroots level, World War II affected the growing Civil Rights struggle, particularly in the areas of voting rights and education.

Contact: Richard Wormser, Videoline Production
1697 Broadway, Room 901, NY, NY 10019
(212) 664-7702 / rwormser@aol.com

River of Song

Grantee: The Filmmakers’ Collaborative
Project Director: John Junkerman
SHMF Award (1996): $25,000

River of Song captures and celebrates the dynamism and diversity of American music along the length of the Mississippi River, beginning in northern Minnesota and moving southward to the Gulf of Mexico. The programs in this four-hour television series weave together the performances and stories of musicians, from Ojibwe pow-wows at the river’s source to the jazz clubs of New Orleans; from Minneapolis rock to St. Louis gospel and Memphis soul; from bluegrass bands in the Farm Belt to Blues in the Delta; from Scandinavian fiddlers in the north woods to Cajun stompers in the Louisiana bayous. The series profiles close to fifty performers and groups, encompassing more than three hundred musicians and producing an unprecedented portrait of the scope, spirit, and substance of American music at the close of the 20th century.

Information:
www.pbs.org/riverofsong
Inquiries: John Junkerman
jtj@fmail.plala.or.jp

Distribution:
Acorn Media
(800) 474-2277 / www.acornmedia.com

Saturday Night, Sunday Morning: The Travels of Gatemouth Moore

Grantee: The Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas
Project Director: Louis Guida
SHMF Award (1991): $20,000

Telling the story of an evangelical preacher that B.B. King has called “one of the greatest blues singers ever,” this one-hour film spans seven eventful decades. Gatemouth Moore’s career uniquely reflects the vitality, tensions, and paradoxes of black life in the South. The film traces that career, focusing on the interplay between sacred and secular traditions of African American culture in the South.

Winner of a Blue Ribbon at the American Film and Video Festival, the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, and a Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival. Nationally telecast on PBS and the Discovery Channel.

Information:
Louis Guida, Co-Media, Inc.
209 E. High Street, Lexington, KY 40507
(859) 231-5822

Distribution:
(70-minute version)
California Newsreel
149 Ninth Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 621-6196 / contact@newsreel.org
www.newsreel.org
(58-minute version)
Multicultural Media
56 Browns Mill Rd., Berlin, VT 05602
(802) 223-1294 / mcm@multiculturalmedia.com www.multiculturalmedia.com

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy

Grantee: Social Media Productions
Project Director: Barak Goodman
SHMF Award (1996): $45,000

This 90-minute historical documentary focuses on one of the most significant and dramatic legal controversies of the 20th century – the story of eight black youths accused of raping two white prostitutes in Depression-era Alabama. The compelling program proceeds along two intertwining narrative tracks: First, the story of the

young men themselves, as their case, with its multiple trials, unfolds. Second, the story of the broader struggles surrounding these events – of North vs. South, Communist vs. non-Communist, of those who would uphold justice and those who would subvert it. The film does not seek an answer to the question of guilt or innocence (historians have long ago settled that in favor of innocence). Rather, the production works to explore how Scottsboro happened in the first place and what it says about American society at so critical a time.

Nationally broadcast on “American Experience” (PBS) in 2001. Winner of the Audience Award at Docfest, the grand prize at Urbanworld, the grand prize at Mississippi’s Crossroads Film Festival, and a Primetime Emmy for Best Nonfiction Special.

Information:
Barak Goodman, Social Media Productions
435 1st Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
(718) 369-1011 / bgood21635@aol.com

George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire

Grantee: Southern Regional Council, Atlanta, GA
Project Director: Paul Stekler, Austin, TX
SHMF Award (1994): $50,000

This award-winning 90-minute documentary explores the life of the man who came to symbolize the politics of racial prejudice in America, from his rural Alabama boyhood, through his early career as a racially moderate populist, and into his politically motivated reinvention of himself as the champion of alienated voters – sometimes called the “silent majority,” the driving force of “white backlash.” Culminating in his campaign for the Presidency, through which Wallace changed the national political agenda, the story of his career is interwoven with the history of the Civil Rights movement and the fracturing of American politics in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Aired as a two-night special on the PBS series “American Experience.”

Information: Paul Stekler, Midnight Films
1903 Brackenridge, Austin, TX 78704
(512) 416-0196 / stek@mail.utexas.edu
72772.1764@compuserve.com

A Story of Public Housing

Grantee: Lamont Productions, Inc.
Project Director: Dolores Smith
SHMF Award (1992): $41,846

This half-hour film traces the history of public housing in Washington, D.C. – from its origins as an effort to stimulate the economy and provide transitional housing for families struggling out of the Depression, to its current status as a program which may contribute to a cycle of endless poverty for the urban poor.

Information: Dolores Smith, Lamont Productions
834 Allison Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20011
(202) 291-6353 / lamontpro@aol.com

Storyville

Grantee: Center for Southern Folklore, Memphis TN
Project Director: Anne Craig, New Orleans, LA
SHMF Award (1994): $30,000

This program looks at the rise and fall of America’s only legal red-light district, which thrived in New Orleans from 1898 to 1917. From the vantage of characters often ignored by traditional history, and through a mixture of historical footage, photographs, early Hollywood films and contemporary interviews with New Orleanians connected with “the District,” the hour-long documentary explores an important moment in the social and cultural history of the South, women’s history, and race relations in turn-of-the-century America.

Aired by WGBH, Boston, and PBS stations around the country.
Information: Anne Craig, Tate Rouge Productions
385 Sterling Place, Brooklyn, NY 11238
(718) 398-1970 / anneocraig@aol.com

Stranger With a Camera

Grantee: Appalshop, Inc.
Project Director: Elizabeth Barret
SHMF Award (1995): $40,000

Through the prism of a tragic event that occurred in the upland South during 1967, Barret’s one-hour film explores the history and ethics of media representation. In the community of Jeremiah, Kentucky, a local resident, Hobart Ison, shot and killed Canadian filmmaker Hugh O’Connor after filming had taken place on Ison’s property. O’Connor was directing a film commissioned by the U.S. government to be shown in the American pavilion at the international HEMISFAIR in Texas. Stranger provocatively examines the relationship between those who make films and those who lead the lives and inhabit the locales that the documentarians portray. Taking Appalachian culture and the history of its representation as a starting point, the film memorably explores the nature, purpose, and potential liabilities of image-making in our society. Barret positions herself in the midst of a dreadful historical event, offering the perspective of a filmmaker who grew up in the region, and providing a meditation on how media portrayals may exploit their subject matter.

Premiered at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. Nationally broadcast on PBS.

Information:
Elizabeth Barret, Appalshop, Inc.
91 Madison Avenue, Whitesburg, KY 41858
(606) 633-0108 / appalshop@aol.com

Tall Tales from the Hunters’ Camp

Grantee: The Seajay Society
Project Director: Ann Blythe
SHMF Award (1992): $10,000

This two-part audio program, which was developed as a public radio series, features two related short stories by William Gilmore Simms – important for their humor and realism, and as social histories – which are cast in the form of tall tales told in a hunters’ camp in western South Carolina. Thirty minutes each.

Information:
Ann Blythe Meriwether, The Seajay Society
P.O. Box 514, Columbia, SC 29250
(803) 256-4676

Tell About the South: Voices in Black and White, Parts I & II

Grantee: James Agee Film Project
Project Director: Ross Spears
SHMF Awards: $19,500 (1993); $40,000 (1997)

Narrated by former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, Tell About the South is the first documentary film series to describe and dramatize the story of modern Southern literature - a tale of unprecedented cultural and artistic expression amid social and economic turmoil. The series explores the literary tradition of the South, showcasing the rich history and culture of the region and featuring interviews with numerous living authors - among these, Alice Walker, William Styron, Ernest Gaines, Mary Lee Settle, George Garrett, Shelby Foote, Eudora Welty, Reynolds Price, Pat Conroy, Nikki Giovanni, Albert Murray, Willie Morris, and Margaret Walker. Part I, titled “Tell About the South,” surveys the period from the Great Depression to the end of World War II; Part II, “Prophets and Poets,” moves from 1945 to the Civil Rights movement; Part III, “Let Freedom Ring,” carries the story of Southern literature to the present. Programs explore the life and work of writers burdened by a complex history of racial and economic distress, tracing the growth and interrelation of white and African American writers within the same historical and cultural context. The series considers how a new generation of writers has dealt with a South now more prosperous and homogenized, yet which nonetheless remains a distinctive region within the larger country.

Nominated for Best Documentary Series 2000 by International Documentary Association. Gold Medal (Part II) at the Flagstaff International Film Festival.

Information: Ross Spears, Agee Films
P.O. Box 3441, Charlottesville, VA 22903
(434) 971-2921 / jagee@cstone.net
www.ageefilms.org

The Uprising of ‘34

Grantee: The Southern Regional Council
Project Director: George Stoney
SHMF Award (1991): $40,000

The 1934 textile strike was the largest in U.S. history in a single industry. This three-part, 90-minute video documentary recounts the story of that event, in which more than a quarter of a million Southern mill-workers took action. The uprising was a major force in shaping economic development in the South. Through documentary footage and first-person interviews with surviving participants, the highly praised film explores the causes, consequences, and social implications of the strike.

Uprising was nationally aired as part of the PBS series P.O.V. The film has been screened at more than fifty locations throughout the South and around the country, often in workshop settings, and is a 1996 Joady Award Winner (Film Arts Foundation) and Gold Hugo Winner (1995 Chicago International Film Festival).

Information: Judith Helfand
200 West 72nd Street, New York, NY 10023
(212) 875-0456