Vintage Black American History & Culture Documentaries

[xoxodede]

Born for Hard Luck (1976) - watch here: Born for Hard Luck | Folkstreams



Afro-American Work Songs in a Texas Prison (1966)



J. B. Murray: Writing in Unknown Tongues (1986) -- watch here: J. B. Murray: Writing in Unknown Tongues | Folkstreams

 

[xoxodede]

Hush Hoggies Hush (1978)



Black Delta Religion (1973)


Watch here: Black Delta Religion | Folkstreams


When My Work Is Over (2000)


Watch here: When My Work Is Over | Folkstreams

 

[xoxodede]

Two Black Churches



TWO BLACK CHURCHES" is based on fieldwork Bill Ferris conducted at a church in Vicksburg, Miss. and at a church in New Haven, Conn. Footage includes a full immersion baptism, congregation members and preachers at both churches discussing their call to the faith, and scenes from worship services at both churches. The film contrasts the two approaches to worship at each church.

Watch here:Two Black Churches | Folkstreams

 

[xoxodede]

Elijah Pierce (1974)

Elijah Pierce was born the youngest son of a former slave on a Mississippi farm on March 5, 1892. He began carving at an early age when his father gave him his first pocketknife. By age seven, Elijah Pierce began carving little wooden farm animals. Throughout his life, he continued carving animals in earnest and many were sold or given away to people who admired his work or to people he felt could benefit from it. For Pierce, these individual animal carvings each had their own story. They represented the beasts of Genesis or creatures from the folktales of Pierce’s youth.

As time passed, Pierce found work as a barber and began to carve wood seriously. He eventually had his own barbershop on Long Street in Columbus, Ohio. The barbershop on Long Street was a hospitable gathering place. Customers would come not only for haircuts, but to discuss the news of the day. Pierce was quite engaged in the life of the local community and of the nation. His secular carvings show his love of baseball, boxing, comics and the movies. They also reflect his interest in national politics and his appreciation for American heroes who fought for justice and liberty. Through his carvings Pierce told his own life story and chronicled the African-American experience. He also carved stories with universal themes. He seldom distinguished the race of his figures - he thought of them as everyman.

Watch here: Elijah Pierce | Folkstreams


Sermons in Wood (1980)



An interview with Elijah Pierce in his barbershop on Long Street in Columbus. He talks about his work and his life and he shows how his carvings express his experiences and beliefs. Shows Elijah Pierce telling the stories behind his carvings including his own near-lynching, his father’s tales of slavery, his religious conversion, and some of the Bible stories that have influenced him.


Watch here: Sermons in Wood | Folkstreams

 

[xoxodede]

We Are Arabbers (2004)


We Are Arabbers follows the horse-and-wagon produce vendors along the streets of Baltimore, Maryland as they struggle to make a living and maintain their unique culture. Once an integral part of society, hucksters, hawkers and peddlers distributed goods and services throughout the cities of America announcing their trade with a holler or song. Today, only a handful remain to share their moving stories, revealing their hidden network of back alley stables. Along this journey, we meet the old-timers, their contemporaries and customers, the Scottish ferrier, the Amish wheelwrights and the Mennonite harness-makers. The arabbers continue their heritage into the twenty-first century. Do you know who they are? Do you know their history?

Watch here: We Are Arabbers | Folkstreams

 

[xoxodede]

Mermaids, Frog Legs, and Fillets (1978)

No Trailer - watch here: Mermaids, Frog Legs, and Fillets | Folkstreams

Long before the advent of hip-hop as a multi-million dollar industry, African Americans were rapping and rhyming in the street, in their neighborhoods, and on the fish market docks in Washington DC. In this film, Lincoln Rorie and Gerry Williams use traditional rhymes--and make up a few new ones--to entertain their customers, sell fish, and make money. Lincoln, from D.C., was hired by Captain White’s fish market boat in 1973, and inspired Gerry, from a fishing family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to use rhyme to sell. It's a remarkable story about a creative tradition in an occupational setting, and about how the expressive spirit takes hold in everyday life.

The film was produced by filmmaker Paul Wagner and folklorists Jack Santino and Steve Zeitlin who were working for the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife which took place on the national mall, about a mile from the fish market. Lincoln Rorie was a participant in a program called DC Folklore, which marked the first time the Festival highlighted its own community of Washington D.C., and the first time they featured a single city as a setting for urban folk culture.

 

[xoxodede]

Zydeco (1986)



Nick Spitzer film on African American dance-hall music in French-speaking southwest Louisiana, with Dolon Carriere, Armand Ardoin, and Alphonse “Bois Sec” Ardoin.

Watch here: Zydeco | Folkstreams

Learned it in Back Days and Kept It (1981)



Lucreaty Clark (1903 - 1986) was one of sixteen children born to a family in rural Jefferson County, Florida. Her grandparents had been slaves on the Rindell plantation, outside of Monticello. After emancipation, her parents remained as tenant farmers on the cotton plantation. In the early twentieth century, the area was still part of the system of plantations, small farms, and cotton production. In addition to many other rural life skills, Clark learned to make white oak baskets from her parents and in-laws—who in turn had learned from their parents. Long after the plantations were gone, she continued to fashion the baskets in the way she had learned from her family.

Making a basket is complex and time-consuming. The process of making oak splints starts with cutting down a tree, then removing limbs, peeling the bark, splitting the tree in quarters or eighths, and using a froe and mallet to split the wood into smaller sections. The basketmaker then splits the splints into the right thickness using a knife and hands, and scrapes them smooth. Some basketmakers estimate that it takes fifty hours to make a medium-sized basket.

Watch here: Learned it in Back Days and Kept It | Folkstreams

 

[xoxodede]

Pizza Pizza Daddy-O (1968)



PIZZA PIZZA DADDY-O (1967) looks at continuity and change in girls' playground games at a Los Angeles school. The footage included in this film was taken in December of 1967 on the playground of a school in a Los Angeles black ghetto. The players are a dozen fourth-grade girls (9 to 10 years old). The repertoire of games played by African-American children at this time was highly stable across the country and highly dynamic; new games (usually re-workings or parodies of older ones) appear and disappear, but their essential structure and stylistic characteristics continue to be handed on from one generation of school children to the next.

Watch here: Pizza Pizza Daddy-O | Folkstreams

My fave... so cute! Black is so beautiful

 

[LevelUp]

props

 

[K.Dot]

fukking IN.

 

[xoxodede]

Angel That Stands By Me: Minnie Evans Paintings

A portrait of the African-American visionary artist Minnie Evans from Wilmington, N.C., by Academy Award winning filmmakers Irving Saraf and Allie Light. Watch the entire film on Folkstreams http://www.folkstreams.net/film,71

Some art by Mrs. Evans.

 

[xoxodede]

Clementine Hunter

Clementine Hunter (late December 1886 or early January 1887 – January 1, 1988) was a self-taught black folk artist from the Cane River region of the U.S. state of Louisiana, who lived and worked on Melrose Plantation. She is the first African-American artist to have a solo exhibition at the present-day New Orleans Museum of Art.

"Revisiting Clementine Hunter's Murals at African House" by Jill Whitten and Robert Proctor

 

[xoxodede]

Made in Mississippi: Black Folk Art and Crafts

Full doc here: http://www.folkstreams.net/pub/FilmPage.php?title=79

Made in Mississippi is a 16mm documentary based on fieldwork that William Ferris conducted with African American folk artists throughout Mississippi. Footage includes Richard Foster at the "dog trot" house he grew up in, basket maker Leon "Peck" Clark, quilter Amanda Gordon, floral gardener Esther Criss, cane fife maker Otha Turner, painter and cane maker Lester Willis, and sculptor James "Son" Thomas. The artists discuss their informal training, artisic motivation and vision, and the value they attach to their art while working on their crafts.

 

[xoxodede]

Family Across the Sea



Family Across the Sea shows how scholars have uncovered the remarkable connections between the Gullah people of South Carolina and the people of Sierra Leone. The ancestors of the Gullah were African slaves brought to the Sea Islands because of their expertise in rice cultivation. Family Across The Sea documents how the Gullahs incorporated many aspects of African culture in the daily life of the plantations. The Gullah language contains over 3,000 words of African origin and resembles the Krio language of Sierra Leone. One woman speaks what many African Americans will feel: "Now, I know that I have really come home."

 

[xoxodede]

Gravel Springs Fife and Drum



A compelling and award-winning portrait of Othar Turner, his music and their role in the Gravel Springs community. The film not only demonstrates how to make a cane fife, but also gets to the heart of both Turner and his fife and drum music as he's shown performing at an annual Fourth of July picnic. Quick cuts between dancing band members and the rhythmic movements of Turner's family going about their daily chores capture the mounting excitement and provide a rare, revealing glimpse of the work and play that characterize this traditional rural Mississippi society.