The Ballad of Frankie Silver
[wpshopcart_add_to_cart id=”4″] In 1833 Mrs. Frances Silver was hanged in Morganton, North Carolina, for the ax murder of her husband Charles. For a century and a half the case has lived on in newspapers, pamphlets, memoirs, petition, folksong, and legends. Bobby McMillon, a member of the Silver family, learned stories about Frankie as he grew […]
A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle
[wpshopcart_add_to_cart id=”2″] The story of a gifted African American family from the rural South. With interviews and stories, and scenes from daily life, reunions, gospel concerts, and church services, the film traces the history of the Landis family of Granville County, North Carolina, over the lifetime of its oldest surviving member, 86-year-old Mrs. Bertha M. […]
Born for Hard Luck and Free Show Tonight
[wpshopcart_add_to_cart id=”7″] Born for Hard Luck A portrait of the last Black medicine-show performer, Arthur “Peg Leg Sam” Jackson, with brilliant harmonica songs, tales of hoboing, buck dances, and an authentic live medicine-show performance filmed at a North Carolina county fair in 1972. Between the Civil War and World War II, many such gifted and […]
Being a Joines: A Life in the Brushy Mountains
[wpshopcart_add_to_cart id=”8″] John E. “Frail” Joines was a master tale teller from Wilkes County, North Carolina, on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His hunting tales, stories from World War II, and religious narratives mirror changes that have swept away the mountain folk community in a single generation and show the character and […]
When My Work is Over
[wpshopcart_add_to_cart id=”5″] Louise Anderson (1921-1994), the gifted African American storyteller who played Dark Sally in Tom Davenport’s children’s classic Ashpet: An American Cinderella, tells her family stories and folk tales, and recites poetry in this film taped in Jacksonville, North Carolina, in the last years of her life. She presents a powerful portrait of courage, […]