"Folklife Through the Lens "

         ... is a screening and lecture format with a series of different documentary clips from Stan Woodward's extensive Southern folklife video collection. The theme of the program is "Video Preservation of Local Folklife and Folklore" and it includes a hands-on session with the audience who are invited to bring their home video cameras.

After the screening and talk, Stan will invite those who have brought their own video cameras to come to the front for a demonstration session before the audience. Stan will demonstrate "best use" techniques for each type of camera in the capture of stories, traditional arts or the folkways that reside right in our own communities and families in the South and in other regions of the country.

          "Often these 'keepers' of a tradition are the last in their lineage. Many times they are relatives in the family. But we are so use to them that we take

         them for granted and are too close to them to value the importance of documenting for archival purposes their folk heritage tradition. And what is a

        folk heritage tradition? It is the practice of an art self taught or passed on to an individual by a tradition-keeper or members of a traditional community.

        It is an art not formally or institutionally-taught, but self generated or passed on through intentional mentorship or by careful observation. In the  art

        of storytelling, it may be the memory of a direct experience in a historical moment - as the story of a battle in a war and the details of what happened

        to the story-teller, or the one who passed the story on to him or her. It may be the recalling of people and events in that person's life that help shed           

        light on what went into making that a historical event. "        - Stan Woodward

         The goal of this program is to provide the contextual information surrounding the making of Stan's folk heritage documentaries and to illustrate the importance of preserving an accurate video record of the folk heritage traditions, artisans and tradition-keepers and their roots in a culture rapidly disappearing from the "New South." This will be accomplished by inspiring the audience with Mr. Woodward's own capture of Southern culture and folklife and the stories associated with these recordings.

         "I want to encourage the audience to take the time to use their own video cameras to document stories and traditions within their

          own family or community where those traditions are passing away as the generation of elders pass on. I also want to point them

          to the places which are interested in documenting and archiving local and regional folklore and folklife for posterity.    And I want

          to provide basic quality standards for amateur recording and collecting of audio and video as audience members seek to make

          their own video record of local Southern culture and folklife. ".

 

Supported by power-point presentations, Mr. Woodward takes the audience with him on the various "shoots", providing stories and information that goes beyond what we see on the screen. We learn how his storytelling approach to documenting Southern folklife and Southern culture parallels and fits into the larger context of Southern writers as image-makers who have collectively formed an ethos and iconic mental picture of the South in all it's complexity. We will see how Southern folklife documentaries have often shattered this collective image of the South and where they are able to overcome or fall into the stereotypes that derive from this collective view.

The Folklife Through the Camera program is audience-interactive, as the filmmaker makes connections between the people in the audience and their life experiences and those of the subjects in the documentaries:

             "Folklife is us - it is you and me", says Stan, "Us in our social and cultural contexts; in our our traditions - the ones

              that come from family or from community - those who pass on their knowledge, arts and skills to us with no formal

              training or education. This takes the form of "heritage culture" and is the pure passing-down of root culture and

              practices that keep them alive from generation to generation. In fact, this describes what is at the very heart of folklife.

              A perfect example is found in the Blues. Listen to the story of how harmonica player, Max Hightower, was mentored

              into the Blues by living in the root culture where the Blues was sung and played as a musical expression of uncles.

 

             "But the tyranny and power of the 'televistic' super-culture that has grown to dominate American life - motivated

              by making money, and lots  of it - and the advent of a digital world connected worldwide by the Internet has radically

              changed the face of culture. How does this impact and change traditional culture and it's continuation?  My program

              sets the folklife we see in my documentaries up against the realities of this new paradigm. And it is against this backdrop

              that we consider the urgency to preserve traditional culture and folklife on video - now. "    - Stan Woodward