
Bulgaria: Fire Dance Ritual
2020 · 44m · Documentary
Every year in June, the small Bulgarian village of Balgari celebrates St Constantine with a special ritual. Initiated ‘nestinari’ go into a music-induced trance and dance on bonfires in a display of religious passion.
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Staré Valašsko
1956
A short film about traditional crafts and culture that can still be found in the Wallachian mountains today.
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The Story of the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem
1983
At the forefront of the folk revival movement since the 1950's, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem are a highly influential group of Irishmen. Popularizing the traditional music of their homeland, the Brothers brought Celtic music into America, and remain some of its most avid performers.
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Joan Baez: How Sweet the Sound
2009 · ★ 6.7
Following folk musician Joan Baez on her extensive 2008-2009 tour, this film commemorates her career, which has spanned five decades. It includes concert and archival footage as well as interviews with such disparate colleagues, friends and admirers as Bob Dylan, Jesse Jackson and David Crosby. In addition to the music, it also touchs upon Baez's long history of global social activism.
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Music Inn
2007 · ★ 10
During a decade rife with paranoia, in the middle of the McCarthy era, Music Inn was a bold experiment. Halfway between the Second World War and The Civil Rights Movement, Phil and Stephanie Barber created an oasis in the Berkshire Hills in Western Massachusetts where aspiring musicians came to learn from the very best. Students and faculty, young and old, rich and poor, white, black, and brown convened together and learned from each other. Defying the surrounding environment, Music Inn harbored a racial and cultural harmony where music was all that mattered.
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Latvian Song and Dance Festival 2023
2023
A highlight of Baltic culture, the festival dedicated to Latvian song and dance celebrates its 150th anniversary in Riga.
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Moravian Hellas
1964 · ★ 4.8
Karel Vachek’s graduate film offers us a documentary essay which is both a light-hearted and aggressive little piece and also a parody of investigative film journalism. The Strážnice folk festival, backed by the cultural Party apparatus of the time, for years had little to commend itself to authentic folklore. In the film the event assumes the form of a bizarre stage spectacle with almost surrealistic elements that Vachek reinforces with unconventional approaches (commentary appearing as titles on screen, singing, declamations into the camera, feature etudes, the fusion of news coverage and fiction). The result is a stirring film collage depicting various characters, from crowd-pleasers, Easter egg decorators, kitsch artists and peddlers, to museologists and local residents, all of whom come up against the eccentric "identical” twin reporters Karel and Jan Saudek and a bored actress who appears as an extra. Using their special blend of irony and wit, they present us with the sad truth.
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Traces of Crimea
2016 · ★ 10
A musical portrait of the ethnic minorities of the Crimean peninsula, it explores the sonic diversity from this unique land.
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The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time
1982 · ★ 7.8
Documentary about the blacklisted folk group The Weavers, and the events leading up to their triumphant return to Carnegie Hall.
More info →The Eternal Song
1941
Karol Plicka was an important musician and composer. He recorded folk songs immediately after hearing them in musical notation to preserve them for future generations. Similarly, he records and interprets traditions associated with dance, folk song and local stories that vary from region to region in his film The Eternal Song. The short documentary presents merry-making in Slovak and Czech regions that are changing with the coming modernization and transformation of musical records.
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