Film Screenings / Programs / Series
SOUTHERN JOURNEY (REVISITED) (with THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS) [ONLINE]
July 28 – August 3
Virtual Theatrical Engagement! Available for Streaming Rental from July 28-August 3!
Rob Curry & Tim Plester
SOUTHERN JOURNEY (REVISITED)
2020, 75 min, digital
In 1959 the legendary ethnomusicologist and song-collector Alan Lomax set out on a road trip through the southern United States, together with the then-unknown English folksinger Shirley Collins. Recently returned from ten years of voluntary exile during the McCarthy era, Lomax’s goal was to collect a definitive cross-section of traditional American roots music, using a state-of the-art prototype stereo tape-recorder. This was a world on the cusp of monumental change, and the recordings they made serve as both a peerless collection of traditional music and a social document of the times.
Sixty years on, SOUTHERN JOURNEY (REVISITED) follows the route that Lomax and Collins previously traversed – searching out the remaining echoes of the recordings they made along the way. The film features a glorious soundtrack of blues and bluegrass, hollers and spirituals. But alongside the music SOUTHERN JOURNEY (REVISITED) takes the pulse of a nation, surveying what has and has not changed, for better and for ill, in the intervening six decades. Made at a time when the hard-won victories of the Civil Rights movement (which served as the backdrop to the original Southern Journey) are being challenged, the film travels beyond reductive stereotypes to explore instead the diversity and complexity of an area steeped in a fertile musical heritage. From fifth-generation fiddlers to avant-garde folksingers, from banjo-pickers to diddley-bow players to vegan hillbilly disc-jockeys, SOUTHERN JOURNEY (REVISITED) highlights a robust living tradition that still serves to help knit society together.
“This roving, loquacious documentary does its damn best to pin down the American soul, going on a road trip through Virginia, Kentucky and Mississippi in the tracks of ethnomusicologists Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins. […] There are heart-stopping performances, and we are apprised of the odd informational gem, such as the fact that the beat for MC Hammer’s ‘Can’t Touch This’ is drawn from Mississippi’s fife and drum music. But the film quickly spirals into a broader survey of southern culture, as the tension and culture wars of the 2018 midterm elections smolder in the background.” –Phil Hoad, THE GUARDIAN
PLUS:
Rob Curry & Tim Plester
THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS
2017, 94 min, digital
Three years prior to the production of SOUTHERN JOURNEY (REVISITED), Rob Curry & Tim Plester collaborated to create a documentary on a closely related subject: a portrait of renowned English folksinger Shirley Collins, who, before finding fame in her own right, accompanied Alan Lomax on his “Southern Journey” and collaborated closely with him in collecting and recording the folk music of the region. Intimately related as the two films are, it made perfect sense to present them together for this online presentation.
Shirley Collins was at the epicenter of the British folk-music revival during the 1960s-70s, before a vocal disorder robbed the world of her uniquely ancestral singing voice. Granted intimate access to recording sessions for her first new album in almost four decades (“Lodestar”), and making adventurous use of seminal audio-recordings from the Alan Lomax archives, THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS deliberately eschews the straightforward biopic approach in order to chronicle one woman’s gallant battle to rise phoenix-like from long silent ashes. A unique and moving portrait of a great musical artist, it’s both an illuminating chronicle of her career and a character study of Shirley Collins today.
“With [their] focus firmly on Collins’ joyful rediscovery of her own voice, Curry and Plester have crafted a space for the singer’s star quality to shine. Exuding a keen sympathy for local tradition and place, it is something to be cherished.” –Lewis Gordon, LITTLE WHITE LIES
FILMS BY ALAN LOMAX
While Alan Lomax’s 1959 song-collecting trip was the inspiration for both of Curry and Plester’s documentary features, it was just one of many recording trips undertaken by Lomax and a host of other field collectors like him. Twenty years after the “Southern Journey”, Lomax produced a five-part PBS series entitled AMERICAN PATCHWORK, which again roved throughout Appalachia and the Southern USA in search of traditional music. The Lomax Archive have begun the process of releasing all the rushes from the project on their YouTube channel, and we’ve specially created a playlist highlighting some of those that have a direct connection to SOUTHERN JOURNEY (REVISITED). These include a fife and drum picnic in Como, Mississippi; Shirley Collins’s all time favorite singer of traditional song, Almeda Riddle; Lucius Smith, the banjo player who features in the Senatobia reconstruction scenes in THE BALLAD OF SHIRLEY COLLINS; Old Regular Baptist and Sacred Harp songs; country blues from Gravel Springs, Mississippi; fiddle and banjo tunes from Virginia; and some delightful scenes of people playing diddly bows, mouth bows, and cola bottles. Taken together, they’re a testament to the diversity and breadth of influence of American roots music.
To watch the videos, click here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLq_NCK6PBY7KLO2sOsGv0iudkcWtMFzF3
