Folkstreams is a non-profit organization that aims to collect and make available online

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...

s about American

folk art Folk art covers all forms of visual art made in the context of folk culture. Definitions vary, but generally the objects have practical utility of some kind, rather than being exclusively decorative. The makers of folk art are typically tr ...

and culture. It preserves and provides wide access to documentary films about the activities, voices, and experiences of members of America's diverse regional, ethnic, religious, and occupational cultures. The films show a variety of documentary approaches but commonly let the people themselves present their own circumstances, values, and arts. Folkstreams was conceived and developed by filmmaker Tom Davenport in 1999. Encouraged by folklorist Dr. Daniel Patterson from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Davenport saw the importance of these films and knew from experience that their natural audiences had difficulty finding and seeing them. Many of the films are old, out of print, rare, and endangered. Others are obtainable only from little-known distributors. Their age and outdated formats, their non-standard lengths, the regional and ethnic speech of the people they feature, and their unusual subject matters had excluded many from the mainstream mass market television and cable broadcast opportunities in the last half of the 20th century. As of early 2021, Folkstreams was streaming over 375 such documentaries created since 1949. The goal of Folkstreams is to recover many more such films, deposit copies in a library for long-term preservation, and digitize and stream the films for the internet public. About a quarter of these are shown with background information about the making of the film and the traditions presented. Most films on Folkstreams are protected by copyright, and the filmmakers have given their permission and encouragement for the streaming. An archive of all footage and corresponding materials is kept at the outhern Folklife Collection http://www2.lib.unc.edu/wilson/sfc/at the Wilson Library in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Folkstreams works with the National Film Preservation Foundation to identify and restore endangered 16mm films. Folkstreams made the website '
Video Aids to Film Preservation
'' to help the public and conservators better understand the technology of film. The Folkstreams database platform was created in 2002 by Steve Knoblock, and continues to be the foundation for the website where the films are related to contextual background entries. In 2021 Tom Davenport received a National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work developing Folkstreams.net.

Example films

Gandy dancer

The High Lonesome Sound

References

External links

*http://www.folkstreams.net/ *https://www.youtube.com/user/folkstreamer?ob=0&feature=results_main
Southern Folklife Collection
Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Film preservation organizations Documentary film organizations Video hosting American folk art {{film-org-stub

Example films

See also

References

External links