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Folkstreams
Folkstreams is a non-profit organization that aims to collect and make available online documentary films about folk art 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 Their age and outdated formats, their non-standard lengths, the regional and ethnic spee ...
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Tom Davenport (filmmaker)
Tom Davenport (born June 13, 1939) is an independent filmmaker and film distributor who has worked for decades documenting American life and exploring folklore. Currently based in Delaplane, Virginia, he is the founder and project director for Folkstreams, a website that houses independent documentary films about American folk roots and cultures. In the winter 2016, Davenport released his follow-up film to his profile of a North Carolina family, ''A Singing Stream'' (1986) which he made in partnership with the Landis family who were featured in that film. In 2018, he released a documentary on a 1932 lynching near his home in Fauquier County in Virginia. He continues to oversee the Folkstreams website, as well as help with the management of his family farm in northern Virginia at Hollin Farms. Early life and education Davenport grew up in Virginia outside Washington, D.C. He received his bachelor's degree in English from Yale University in 1961. After graduating, Davenport was hi ...
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Gandy Dancer
Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers in the United States and Canada, more formally referred to as ''section hands'', who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines. The British equivalents of the term ''gandy dancer'' are ''navvy'' (from ''navigator''), originally builders of canals, or ''inland navigations'', for builders of railway lines, and '' platelayer'' for workers employed to inspect and maintain the track. In the Southwestern United States and Mexico, Mexican and Mexican-American track workers were colloquially '' traqueros''. In the United States and Canada, early section crews were often made up of recent immigrants and ethnic minorities who vied for steady work despite poor wages and working conditions, and hard physical labor. The Chinese, Mexican Americans, and Native Americans in the Western United States, the Irish in the Midwestern United States, African Americans in the Southern United States, ...
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Judy Peiser
Judy Peiser (born June 4, 1945) is a filmmaker as well as co-founder and executive director of the Center for Southern Folklore in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. She graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Illinois and a master's degree from the University of Memphis. Peiser founded the Center for Southern Folklore in 1972 along with William Ferris. Peiser has produced and edited documentary films including ''Fannie Bell Chapman: Gospel Singer'', ''Gravel Springs Fife and Drum'', and ''Ray Lum: Mule Trader'', available on the Folkstreams Folkstreams is a non-profit organization that aims to collect and make available online documentary films about folk art and culture. It preserves and provides wide access to documentary films about the activities, voices, and experiences of memb ... project's website. In interviews she has cited a desire to meet and understand different people as one of the main motivators for her work. She is heavily involved in ...
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Documentary Film
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction Film, motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". The American author and Media studies, media analyst Bill Nichols (film critic), Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries". Research into information gathering, as a behavior, and the sharing of knowledge, as a concept, has noted how documentary movies were preceded by the notable practice of documentary photography. This has involved the use of singular Photograph, photographs to detail the complex attributes of History, historical events and continues to a certain degree to this day, with an example being the War photography, conflict-related photography achieved by popular figures such as Mathew Brady during the Am ...
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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 art, decorative. The makers of folk art are typically trained within a popular tradition, rather than in the fine art tradition of the culture. There is often overlap, or contested ground with 'naive art'. "Folk art" is not used in regard to traditional societies where ethnographic art continue to be made. The types of objects covered by the term "folk art" vary. The art form is categorised as "divergent... of cultural production ... comprehended by its usage in Europe, where the term originated, and in the United States, where it developed for the most part along very different lines." From a European perspective, Edward Lucie-Smith described it as "Unsophisticated art, both fine and applied, which is supposedly rooted in the collective awareness of simple people. The concep ...
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National Film Preservation Foundation
The National Film Preservation Foundation (NFPF) is an independent, nonprofit organization created by the U.S. Congress to help save America's film heritage. Growing from a national planning effort led by the Library of Congress, the NFPF began operations in 1997. It supports activities nationwide that preserve American films and improve film access for study, education, and exhibition. The NFPF's top priority is saving orphan film An orphan film is a motion picture work that has been abandoned by its owner or copyright holder. The term can also sometimes refer to any film that has suffered neglect. History The exact origin of the term orphan film is unclear. By the 1990 ...s, so called because they are not protected by commercial interests and are unlikely to survive without public support. Through its grant programs, the NFPF has helped archives, historical societies, libraries, museums, and universities from all 50 states preserve American films and make them available to ...
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National Heritage Fellowship
The National Heritage Fellowship is a lifetime honor presented to master folk and traditional artists by the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar to Japan's Living National Treasure award, the Fellowship is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. It is a one-time only award and fellows must be living citizens or permanent residents of the United States. Each year, fellowships are presented to between seven and fifteen artists or groups at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. The Fellows are nominated by individual citizens, with an average of over 200 nominations per year. From that pool of candidates, recommendations are made by a rotating panel of specialists, including one layperson, as well as folklorists and others with a variety of forms of cultural expertise. The recommendations are then reviewed by the National Council on the Arts, with the final decisions made by the chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts. As of 2024, ...
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Film Preservation
Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the widest sense, preservation assures that a movie will continue to exist in as close to its original form as possible. For many years the term "preservation" was synonymous with "duplication" of film. The goal of a preservationist was to create a durable copy without any significant loss of quality. In more modern terms, film preservation includes the concepts of handling, duplication, storage, and access. The archivist seeks to protect the film and share its content with the public. Film preservation is not to be confused with film revisionism, in which long-completed films are modified with the insertion of outtakes or new musical scores, the addition of sound effects, black-and-white film being colorized, older soundtracks converted to Do ...
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Journal Of American Folklore
The ''Journal of American Folklore'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the American Folklore Society. The journal has been published since the society's founding in 1888. Since 2003, this has been published at the University of Illinois Press. It publishes on a quarterly schedule and incorporates scholarly articles, essays, and notes relating to its field. It also includes reviews of books, exhibitions and events. Editors The following people have been editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The editor-in-chief heads all departments of the organization and is held accoun ... of the journal:''Journal of American Folklore'', Centennial Index, Vol. 101, No. 402, pp.20–49 References External links * Quarterly journals Publications established in 1888 English-language journals University of Illinois Press aca ...
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Southern Folklife Collection
The Southern Folklife Collection is an archival resource at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, dedicated to collecting, preserving and disseminating traditional and vernacular music, art, and culture related to the American South. The Southern Folklife Collection is located in UNC's Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library. History The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Folklore Program was one of the first graduate programs for Folklore in the United States. The early faculty included , Arthur Palmer Hudson, and Guy B. Johnson, all of whom donated materials that were ultimately placed in the SFC. In 1968, faculty members of the Folklore Program established the UNC Folklore Archives. The John Edwards Memorial Foundation was formed in California in 1962 as an archive and research center named for Australian record collector John Edwards. Following Edwards untimely death in 1960, his remarkable collection of American country music records, along with ...
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Film Preservation Organizations
A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, since the 1930s, synchronized with sound and (less commonly) other sensory stimulations. Etymology and alternative terms The name "film" originally referred to the thin layer of photochemical emulsion on the celluloid strip that used to be the actual medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Many other terms exist for an individual motion-picture, including "picture", "picture show", "moving picture", "photoplay", and "flick". The most common term in the United States is "movie", while in Europe, "film" is preferred. Archaic terms include "animated pictures" and "animated photography". "Flick" is, in general a slang term, first recorded in 1926. It originates in the verb flicker, owing to the flickering appearance of early films ...
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Documentary Film Organizations
A documentary film (often described simply as a documentary) is a nonfiction motion picture intended to "document reality, primarily for instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". The American author and media analyst Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception hat remainsa practice without clear boundaries". Research into information gathering, as a behavior, and the sharing of knowledge, as a concept, has noted how documentary movies were preceded by the notable practice of documentary photography. This has involved the use of singular photographs to detail the complex attributes of historical events and continues to a certain degree to this day, with an example being the conflict-related photography achieved by popular figures such as Mathew Brady during the American Civil War. Documentary movies evolved from the creation of singular images in order to convey parti ...
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