Stan Woodward is an award winning filmmaker who has devoted his work as a documentary video artist to the capture of last-generation practitioners of folklife traditions and associated communities in the South. He concentrates on folk heritage foodways as the most natural "doorway" to enter into these communities. In his works we see a pattern emerge that is part of a fragile but enduring story of rural life and the ingenuity and creativity of rural folk, for whom work and pleasure often require the same amount of sweat and labor. Where these threads begin to weave together most clearly is around the black iron stew pots that are symbols of both the backbreaking labor of farm life and the social gatherings of families and neighbors for fun and relaxation. This is accomplished by the communal cooking of ancestral stews. Stan has moved through the South shooting the story of the people of these foodways and folkways.
                                                                                                                           
Stan's hand-held, spontaneous, "you-are-there" style of "first person singular" filmmaking has the viewer behind the lens as the story unfolds on location - unrehearsed, unflinching in it's reality and naturalism, and, for the most part, unadorned with "TV lighting" and other production methods that so often intrude on the naturalism he prefers in the documentary process. Using a low-profile mini-DV professional camera and a wide angle zoom lens, the filmmaker is able to move easily into remote folklife settings to capture story elements in the "voice" of the practitioners themselves as they are working and interacting - becoming "one of us" as one stewmaster put it.

This ability to immerse the viewer directly into the culture is what distinguishes this filmmaker's work, going all the way back to the Southern film classic, IT'S GRITS!