Barbecue & Home-cooking: Foods That Make You Smile
DVD - $25
Produced for SC Parks, Recreation and Tourism for use in the SC National Heritage Corridor. Selected as featured documentary on SCETV and shown four times in prime time over Southern Lens program, reaching audiences in the states of SC, GA and NC.
Folklorist, Saddler Taylor joins the filmmaker in a surprising search and discovery mission to find the last remaining “true” folk heritage eateries in the farm communities along two-lane blacktops in four rural SC counties. Folk heritage eateries are defined as those where the cooks in the kitchen are preparing food with recipes taught them over wood stoves in farm kitchens or over barbecue pits dug in the ground using old fashioned methods passed-down from generation to generation. SC native, James Brown – “the hardest working man in show business” – makes a surprise appearance in a diner a few miles from where he was born.
Folklorist, Saddler Taylor and Stan Woodward, in designing a field research method for locating and authenticating eateries in Region III of the SC Heritage Corridor that qualify as Official South Carolina Folk Heritage Foodways sites, discovered 48 such dining establishments. With the help of grants from the SC Humanities Council and the SC Arts Commission, a brochure with hours of operation, foodways on the menus, and locations of all of these special "dining museums of Southern cooking" was produced along with a map leading visitors to each site. Copies of these maps come with the purchase of each DVD
BRUNSWICK STEW: A Virginia Treasure
TRT:56:40 (PBS Version)
or …
BRUNSWICK STEW: A Southern Americana Folk Heritage Tradition
TRT 1 Hr 56 Min (Historical Version produced for Brunswick County, VA )
DVD - $25
Broadcast over Virginia PBS Stations. Selected in Zoie Films 2000 Festival (Streamed on //www.movieflix.com)
From 1992 to 1998, Southern folklife documentary producer, Stan Woodward, moved into and through the network of stewmasters and stew crews in Brunswick County, Virginia, to document the story of the origin and the continuation of the nearly 200 year-old tradition of cooking Brunswick stew stirred in huge black iron pots with wooden paddles. The original stew made with squirrels has been modified with chicken substituting for squirrel, and the camera takes us “pot-side” throughout the county as we document the competitive stew crews and stewmasters cooking their “secret” recipes, raising money from sale of the stew in order to help those in need in their communities which exist in a dwindling tobacco-growing region of Southside Virginia. In the historical version we learn the story of the tradition first-hand and trace down the ancestors of those who are said to have first named the stew. The filmmaker visits for the first time on camera the site where locals say the first "Brunswick Stew" was cooked in 1828 by Uncle Jimmy Matthews, camp cook for Dr. Creed Haskins, a Virginia legislator. Both documentaries spend time with locally acclaimed and revered Brunswick County stewmaster champions - “victors” in the “Stew Wars” competition when challenged by the stewmasters in Brunswick, Georgia over the location of the “true” origin of Brunswick Stew.
The difference between the feature length and the PBS version is found in the greater amount of elaboration and time spent in the feature length version on the Georgia Brunswick stew challenge and in pursuit of the historical site and the provenance of the origination of Brunswick stew in Brunswick County, Virginia.
Brunswick Stew:
Georgia Named Her; Georgia Claims Her
TRT 56:40 DVD DVD - $25
Premiered over Georgia Public Broadcasting in 2005, shown at the annual Brunswick Stewbilee cookoff and festival in Brunswick, GA, funded by a grant from the Georgia State Arts Council and the Brunswick-Golden Aisles Arts & Humanities Council.
The Classic Story of the Origin and Folk Heritage Roots of the Georgia stew - kept alive today...
Everyone from Governor Sonny Perdue, U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, the last of the Hogshead Brunswick stewmasters in South Georgia, a Brunswick Stewbilee "stew dog" and "stew Maccaw" testify to the superiority of Georgia Brunswick stew over that made by “the other state up north” that claims origin of the stew. This documentary, shot in the filmmaker's inimitable handheld, spontaneous camera style, begins with a commentary about Stan Woodward's starting out in the 1990's producing the in-depth story of Virginia Brunswick stew during which he discovered the ongoing "Stew Wars" with Georgia Brunswick stewmakers over “the true origin of the stew.” In the feature length documentary, BRUNSWICK STEW: Origins of a Southern Folk Heritage Foodway, and the shorter version which I had shot in the mid 1990's and couple this with contemporary footage shot at the Georgia Agrirama and the Stewbilee Festival in Brunswick, GA, where we documented the folk heritage roots of the Georgia Brunswick stew tradition."
Brunswick Stewbilee:
Georgia's Brunswick Stew Cookoff Festival
TRT 30 min DVD - $20
In the process of traveling Georgia to authenticate the folk heritage roots of Georgia Brunswick stew the filmmaker ran across the Brunswick Stewbilee in Brunswick, GA. Incorporating the unusual and fun-filled festival into his Georgia Brunswick stew documentary, the filmmaker decided to produce this short to help the Stewbilee Festival “town fathers” get in touch with the folk heritage roots that authenticate a long history of Brunswick stewmaking tied to rural Georgia farm communities and families. The Stewbilee is now firmly in touch with the authentic and diverse folk heritage roots of the Georgia Brunswick stew tradition and has grown from simply “another food cook-off festival” to a genuine folk heritage celebration that recognizes the roots of the tradition it recognizes and seeks to keep alive each year.
BURGOO! Legendary Stew of the South ...
TRT 56 min 40 sec (PBS version)
...or...
BURGOO!- A Southern Tradition ...
TRT 1 hr 56 min 40 sec (Original Feature-length Version)
Either DVD - $25
From pioneer days on the western frontier came a stew prepared by farmers and hunters by the name of Burgoo. No one knows where the name comes from, but the folks in Western Kentucky around Owensboro declare that the authentic and historical burgoo has to be made with mutton, or mature sheep. Folks in central Kentucky prefer beef or wild game, and trace the origins to the hunter's stews of old - and one legend has it that a chef and camp cook for Morgan's Raiders gave the stew it's distinguished place in Kentucky lore. One Kentucky Derby winner bore the name, "Burgoo King" and he was named for the famous "Burgoo King" who cooked for the owner of Idlehour Farm - who became a legend himself around Lexington, KY. :But one thing becomes very clear in these documentaries – the passion for whatever is called Burgoo that is cooked in huge black iron cauldrons runs deep in Kentucky - and like Southern stews elsewhere, each location has it's own favorite stewmaster. This is reflected in the titles given to the burgoo masters- “Burgoo Kings”! And they rigorously maintain recipes and cooking traditions passed down from generation to generation. And always along with the communal cooking of Burgoo in black iron pots stirred with wooden paddles comes a lot of leg-pulling, tall tales and a re,arkable fellowship that is sealed around thecooking of Burgoo.
The PBS version of BURGOO! ( Legendary Stew of the South) was premiered over KET 1 and broadcast throughout Kentucky, and the original, feature length version - BURGOO! A Southern Tradition (containing the expanded story of Burgoo, including the peculiar connection between Kentucky Burgoo and the International Burgoo Festival held in West Virginia and named after a legendary Burgoo cooked on Bergoo Creek nearby) - was broadcast over KET 2.
REVIEW By: John Egerton, Food Writer and Author of books on Southen Culture
"Stan, we sat down and watched BURGOO! - the long version - last evening. It flows
like a good sauce, like a frosty- cold beer or a crisp white wine or a
tall glass of sweet tea. I couldn't possibly think of anything to change, to
take out or add. If the Kentucky people don't love this, and praise you
for capturing the essence of their dying art, then I am blind and deaf,
and they are beyond redemption. KET ought to be running the long
version every few months for the next decade, and at least once a year
thereafter. I'm proud to be a part of it."
- John Egerton, Author of "Southern Food"
Carolina Hash: A Taste of South Carolina
TRT 56:40 DVD DVD - $25
CINE Golden Eagle Award Winner
This lively documentary carries the viewer across the State of South Carolina to tell the story of one of the Palmetto State’s most unusual indigenous folk foodways. Hash, cooked in huge black iron pots and stirred with wooden, hand hewn paddles, is original to South Carolina and cooked to local tastes. This foodway has fed most native Carolinian’s ancestors during good and hard times. Hash migrated from Carolina slave cooks on low country rice plantations to farms and into “hash houses” and BBQ restaurants that continue today satisfying the local community taste for this folk heritage stew. No kin to proverbial "cornbeef hash", Carolina hash is a relative to ... well...Puddin' Pot
Cooperative Grocery:
Hashing Out Life at the Old Country Store
TRT 18:40 DVD - $20
This is a remarkable “inside” glimpse into the folk heritage of Southern storytelling at its roots - in this case an old country store and remnant of a mid 1900's farmer's food coop. Here is Southern “raconteuring” at it’s most authentic and natural best. Produced out of footage collected in the course of shooting the CINE Award-winning, Carolina Hash. Doing field research, , the filmmaker stumbles into this store in search of a fabled “hash master” who was said to be among the best in the upstate.
Cooperative Grocery is a perfect example of Stan Woodward's spontaneously-shot handheld camera and is one of the best humorous "first-person" non-stop camera runs of his career. Becoming the intiator of a conversation with a group of men playing cards in the store, Stan deliberately falls into an old fashioned leg-pulling that ranges from who makes the most outstanding hash in South Carolina, to the reason for Senator Strom Thurmond's longevity to an invitation to "Come shoot Walt (the sought-out fabled hashmaster) cooking a traditional hash at one of our Southern wing-dings….”
CUSH (See We Just Call It CUSH below)
TRT: 20 min DVD - $20
This cornmeal concoction - said to only exist in Piedmont, SC - was begun as a way to extend the meal and augment the taste of fried fish caught and eaten at the now defunct Piedmont textile mill in Piedmont, SC put on by the "Fishing Club" made up of mill employees. The Cush tradition hangs on by a thread and is maintained by the Piedmont Volunteer Fire Department's fire chief in memory of and to keep alive the tradition of providing this unique foodway to an aging community that grew up eating it before the textile industry waned in South Carolina. Cush is a cornmeal-based concoction cooked in black iron skillets and seasoned with secret ingredients with proportions only know to the chef.
Ehrhardt Five and Dime
TRT: 15 min DVD - $20
While shooting the Barbecue and Homecooking documentary for the SC National Heritage Corridor, the filmmaker happened upon an old 5 and 10 cent store loaded with general merchandise so typical of small town mercantile stores in the early 20th century in South Carolina and the rest of the South. The proprietor had inherited the store from his father and, out of a love of the “good old days” and respect for the memory of his father he maintained the store pretty much the same as in earlier days. The filmmaker spontaneously entered the store with camera rolling and the resulting amusing spontaneous “slice of life” is a testimony to this producer’s belief in capturing life “au naturale” on the fly.
HALLOWED GROUND: Camp Meetings of the South Carolina Low Country
2-Disk Set - $30
This documentary captures in comparitive detail the five historic primitive campmeetings in the South Carolina Lowcountry that have roots in 18th century Methodism. From a time when black slaves were gathered with white owners under brush arbors to hear the horseback evangelist, Bishop Francis Asbury preach came the establishment of, first, three Anglo-American camp grounds, like , Cattle Creek, Cypress and Indian Field; then,later Afro-American camp meetings were built on land donated by white landowners and were modeled on the "white-folks" camp meetings. Shady Grove came first and later St. Paul's campmeetings. These campmeetings - which have never missed an annual week of meeting since their origins - return thousands from across the country back to their roots to worship, fellowship, eat Southern home cooking over woodfire stoves and keep alive the memory of their ancestral families.
* NOW AVAILABLE! DVD's of Each Individual Camp Meeting ... Each DVD - $20
IT’S GRITS – 30th Anniversary Edition
TRT: 60 min/ Black & White - original film with additional contemporary r " Bonus Footage" at the end
DVD (Digitally Restored and Re-mastered with Authored Commentary by Filmmaker on Track 2 Audio) - $30
This Southern documentary classic by Stan Woodward was shot from 1975 through 1980 while he served as Filmmaker In Residence at the South Carolina Arts Commission. The film came to have a life of it's own, and the filmmaker is still invited to present the film and tell about it's production each year. The film was premiered in 1980 and shown widely - including a national PBS broadcast over WNET in NY. Over the years and through many moves, the 16mm film original became compromised due to reduction in silver halides by Kodak which manufactured the film stock. and due to variable storage conditions. The original was restored to pristine quality by the finest film restorer in the country, made possible by
a Film Preservation Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. It remains a best-seller, and in 2010 at the NYC Food Film Festival was featured and Stan Woodward was awarded the festival.s Filmmaker of the Year Award.
At the time of it's release, New York Times Food Writer, Craig Claiborne, testified to it's timeless value:
“An engaging, sometimes hilarious celebration of one of American’s most interesting and singular
(or is it plural?) foods. This is a film to be taken seriously by anyone who cares about America's culinary heritage.”
- Craig Claiborne, Food Editor, The New York Times
American Film Festival Red and Blue Ribbon; Keynote Film at 1981 Margaret Mead Film Festival, Museum of Natural History, NY, NY And nationally broadcast over PBS's Experimental Television Laboratory program.
Lord Have Mercy: Olgers Store
TRT: 38:40 min DVD - $20 (Includes Shipping/Handling)
Special Selection - Indie Memphis Film Festival: The Soul of Southern Film, 2001; Permanent Collection: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
“The video documentary presents the filmmaker’s impromptus visit with Jimmy Olgers, a natural-born performer of the sort academic folklorists would label a “verbal artist.” Olgers is “on stage”, i.e. performing, throughout the encounter, much as he would do, presumably, in response to a visit by any inquisitive stranger who stops by his converted storefront Museum. The piece engages the viewer in an emergent experience, framed by the filmmaker’s first-person point of view in a skillfully executed hand-held camera style and developed through the filmmaker’s spontaneous interaction with Olgers and two friends who happen to be present – and constitute a kind of in-group audience.” - Gary Barrow, Folklorist
Rockfish Muddle
TRT 18 min DVD - $20 (Includes Shipping/Handling)
This is one of the last folk heritage local rockfish stews cooked by an orginal bownet fisherman on the banks of the Roanoke River at Welden, NC - the “Rockfish Capital of the World”
From ancient times to the present, the East coast striped bass – an ocean and freshwater fish which Roanoke Indian native fishermen called “rockfish” as they returned each year to spawn in the rocky rapids of the Roanoke River – have returned from the waters of the Atlantic Ocean up through Pamlico Sound to the headwaters of their spawning ground. Here the Roanoke River drops down 130 feet from the piedmont plain to the coastal plain over miles of rocks, and nature provides ideal water temperature conditions between April and May for the annual spawn of the rockfish. As the river flows past the village of Welden, it formed a perfect stretch made very productive for local fishermen who had learned the bownet fishing technique for catching rockfish from native American fishermen and passed it along generation to generation.But when the gas motor was made for small fishing boats, a local breed of fishermen became expert at the knowledge of how to maneuver the boats to maximize catches. They would fill the boats and take their catch to shore where wives and family would load them into pickup trucks and take them for sale for customers they had cultivated in the region. But eventually several years of droughts and overfishing threatened the population of rockfish, and there was concern that, if the spawning population grew too small, the fish would lose the way back to this spawning ground and the entire east coast rockfish population would be threatened with extinction. In the 1970's restrictions were placed on bownet fishing, but the local economy of families dependent on selling the rockfish caught in bownets by their fishermen made it necessary to illegally catch the fish. So successful were these fishermen that the Fish and Wildlife Department placed a lifelong ban on bownet fishing, destroying a handed down tradition and ending the tradition of cooking rockfish muddle in big black iron pots along the riverbank to feed the fishermen suring the long days and nights of fishing the rockfish run.
Today just a few of the last of a breed of traditional local bownet fishermen are living who grew up bownetting. Stan Woodward located one of them - J.E. Evans - who lived in Welden on the banks of the Roanoke overlooking the spawning ground. He was befriended by Mr. Evans, who agreed to cook a traditional “rockfish muddle...so long as the filmmaker could supply three 50 Lb fresh-caught live rockfish . By learning the network of old timers who kept up with each other, and by meeting Lt. Jim Ward, the local game warden, the fish appeared at Mr. Evans door. Ths enabled the filmmaker to document Weldon resident, J.E. Evans, Jr. as he cooks a classic Weldon “rock muddle”. He does so hoping that his young grandson who is in attendance will be interested enough to learn and pass on this local cooking tradition and the lore of the river people surrounding it.
Seeing Things Into Being: The Scap Iron Art of Charlie Grimsley
TRT: 18 min 40 sec DVD - $20 (Includes Shipping/Handling)
During a drive from Brunswick, Georgia to Atlanta, having completed shooting the story of the Georgia Brunswick stew tradition, the filmmaker and folklorist, Dr. John Burrison passed by a four-story tall mobile sculpture visible over the trees with a 30 foot metallic fish rotating in a circular motion high in the air trying to get away from a 40 foot metallic canoe with a fisherman aboard raring back on his fishing pole. The vision was just viewable over thetops of Georgia pine trees, and at John Burrison’s request the car was turned around and we pulled into the driveway of Mr. Charlie Grimsley, who came out to greet us. All over his yard were products of what he called a scrap iron artist - a term he coined for himself, - and he took us on a conversational tour. By the time the hour was done, one of the most unexpected and spontaneously-shot records of the work of a self-trained artist and “folk-visionary” was capturedon tape. This film was edited - as were other shorts - out of the filmmaker's archival footage on a grant for such made by the National Endowment for the Arts “Creativity in Folklife” program.
Sheep Stew of Dundas:
TRT: 56:40 min DVD - $25 (Includes Shipping/Handling)
A Gastronomical Delight
Special Selection - Indie Memphis Film Festival: The Soul of Southern Film; Broadcast over Virginia PBS Stations
While shooting the story of the origin of Brunswick stew, the filmmaker ended up in a tiny area of Southside Virginia along the Brunswick and Lunenburg County line. Along the way in this area he was told that he had to tell the story of the cooking of sheep stew - a very popular stew cooked only in a small three-town area. This is a most well-rooted stew that is woven into the agrarian life of this small community, but no one I spoke with outside of this area knew what sheep stew was. The stew is cooked by a stewmaster using a combination of mutton, stale bread, onions and potatoes. The recipe is one of the closest, in its purest form, to the fabled Uncle Jimmy Matthews Brunswick Stew cooked with squirrel, and said to have been the original Brunswick stew so-named by Matthews. The town of Dundas was the epicenter of the cooking of sheep stew, and the local Ruritan club had a stewmaster and stew crew who cooked the stew twice a year. . In the center of town a sign proudly boasts that Dundas is the “Home of the World’s Best Sheep Stew: A Gastronomical Delight.” This film documents one of the last stews cooked over wood fire on the coldest night ever recorded in Dundas. A yard sale and raffle by folks in the Dundas community made possible the editing and broadcast of this documentary over PBS.
Southern Stews: A Taste of the South
TRT:56:40 min DVD - $20 +$5 Shipping/Handling
Premiered over SC/ETV in the inaugural year of the Southern Lens program series, this film was made possible by a grant from the Southern Humanities Media Fund.
"Stan Woodward creates an earthy, front-porch-rocker environment that draws the viewer in as a participant in the
action and takes us deep into the South to see the links between burgoos and Brunswick stews, hashes, bogs and Frogmore stews and the many variations thereof. His "first-person" camera style allows the viewer to travel with him from Kentucky and West Virginia burgoo stewmaking, to a rare glimpse into a sheep stew made in Southside Virginia, to the "puddin' pot" and Frogmore stewmaking of the coastal South Carolina area and along the way to explore the Brunswick stewmaking rivalry between Virginia and Georgia as well as the bogs and hashes that substitute for Brunswick stew in South Carolina."
- Sandy Kytle Woodward, Food Writer
The Morris Chronicle
TRT: 1 hr 53 min DVD - $25 (Includes Shipping & Handling)
From 2003 through 2005, the filmmaker visited with Morris Peeples, an aging African American barbecue artisan who lived to be 100 years old and was renown for his wisdom, storytelling andpraying as well as the cooking of a hog over an old fashioned pit dug in the ground in the Williston-Springfield, SC tradition. Through Morris a connection was made with the Hatiola Hunt – a hunt club that meets in a partially restored “big house” near Morris’s farmhouse, and where Morris is elder member and caretaker. The big house – Hatiola – has a storied past and served as the plantation house where Morris’s father had been a slave. Morris held the keys to the big house and is much honored and revered by the members of the Hatiola Hunt.
This documentary takes the viewer on a shoot that immerses them in Morris’s world and the world of the Hatiola Hunt, providing a penetrating and extraordinary glimpse into Southern culture bound up in the post-history of black and white rural work relationships on local plantations, the political and social economies and folklife which are so much a product of this complex and intricate amalgam of inter-dependent and in-depth human relationships that profoundly effect and shape the men who are living it. This is an inside look at the exotic elements and human anomalies that “make the South the South”, to the perplexity and often the consternation of the outside viewer looking in.
The Olgers Chronicle
TRT: 1 hr 56 min 40 sec DVD - $25 (Includes Shipping & Handling)
From 1995 through 2002, the filmmaker visited with raconteur Jimmy Olgers on the porch at Olgers’ Store and Museum – a country store where Olgers grew up as a child. The country store had doubled as a living quarters for him and his mom and dad, a place of mercantilism and, most important of all, a gathering place for social interaction and entertainment in the days long before television when rural electrification was just beginning and men hunted game to feed their families in rural Southside Virginia. Olgers maintains the store as a museum loaded with Southern folk culture and Americana artifacts donated to him by people who recognize Olgers’ Store as an icon - a “last stand for the memory of the good old days.” Jimmy is both proprietor of the flea market outside the store and curator of artifacts for the objects in the most unusual museum anyone could imagine. He also is a poet and writes a weekly column for the newspaper in nearby Petersburg, VA. But in this documentary, shot over seven years, we are immersed in a world totally set apart from the ever-changing tide of events in the troubled world of the “Information Age”. It is Jimmy’s world. And it is a mixture of side-splitting laughter and joking and the pondering of “the deeper meaning in life” that Jimmy – at his core – represents and seeks to keep in front of us in spite of the seeming trivialization of life by modernity.
This two hour feature length documentary was produced as part of the Southern Routes series of programs containing works edited by the filmmaker out of his extensive collection of Southern culture and folklife documentaries and made possible by a grant from the Creativity in Folklife program at The National Endowment for the Arts.
We Just Call It CUSH
(Order here)
TRT 18:40 DVD - $20
In the once-thriving textile town of Piedmont, South Carolina and out of the textile mill folk heritage tradition of socializing and entertainment centered around traditional community events - in this case cooking of fried fish caught in the Saluda River next to the Piedmont Textile Mill, by members of the Fishing Club - made up of textile workers and encouraged and sponsored by the mill's owners - a dish that was concocted to extend the fish meal is still cooked by the chief of the Piedmont Volunteer Fire Department. The dish is called "cush" - a cornmeal-based and highly-seasoned concoction created to economically compliment and extend a fried fish dinner for large gatherings of 300 or more people. Cush, according to local lore, is only cooked in and known by the town of Piedmont, SC. It is maintained as a cooking tradition today in memory of the mill’s “Fishing Club” that dates back to the late 1800’s...and because it is GOOD!
SOUTHERN ROUTES: The South Seen Through the Roots of Southern Culture
A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts Creativity in Folklife program enabled Stan Woodward to spend six months creating documentaries from The Woodward Studio Folklife Video Archive – an archive containing 1,500 hours of footage gathered over the filmmaker’s lifetime. The result: a five volumn set that the filmmaker says "...Takes the viewer on a trip throughout the South looking at esoteric out-of-the-way but extraordinary roots of Southern culture."
Five Volumn Package Order - $90.00 by contacting woodwardstudio@charter.net
Or... Order Individually as Follows:
Volume One – BBQ, Country Stores & Joe Gunn's Sheep Stew TRT 56 min 40 sec
Individual DVDs - $20
Opens with a short meeting-up with an peculiar Southern folk-icon – the costumed sidewalk attention-getter for a hair cuttery; followed by a work that captures the quirky Drakes Bar-B-Q on the coast in Georgia; then the Ehhardt Five and Dime: one of the last small-town, all-purpose dime stores operated by a wonderful character who could be off the pages of a Southern novel; then Cooperative Grocery: another “last of the small-town” groceries that once served as a farmers coop but now keeps it’s doors open for gentleman gatherings where local “regulars” meet to play cards, ponder the things and ways of the world, and wait for a stranger to come in; Joe Gunn’s Sheep Stew concludes this volume: a “root-capture” of a disappearing Southern folk heritage foodways tradition with key interviews with the last of the tradition-bearers.
Volume Two – Scrap Iron Art, Horse Farmers Gathering, & Sheep Stew Stirring Stick TRT 56 min 40 sec
Individual DVD - $20
Opens with the spontaneously shot Seeing Into Being: The Scrap Iron Art of Charlie Grimsley: a most peculiarly talented artist who “sees” forms that are brought to mind by scraps of metal and realizes them in forms ranging from flowers and birds to whirley-gigs and mammoth moving sculptures; followed by The Ol’ Time Horse Farmers’ Gathering: a small-town festival that draws thousands to see the ways of life on the farms early in the 20th century – distinguished by the largest gathering of mules and work-horses and antique farm implements in the Southeast; then a “root-capture” of the explanation of the use of the three-pronged “stew-stirring stick” used by the makers of sheep stew in and around the villages in the Virginia Southside.
Volume Three – The Olgers Chronicle TRT 1 hr 56 min Individual DVD - $20
If ever there were a character who were ready to appear in a Southern novel, Jimmy Olgers would be that man: Poet, story-teller, jokester, and keeper of Southern regalia, the fineries of ol’ time Southern “black-pot” cooking, and Southern traditions rooted in the Civil War fought by his relatives on the site of Olgers’ Store. Includes another “root-capture” of a rare folk heritage tradition called “National Turtle Day of Sutherland”.
Volume Four – The Morris Chronicle TRT 1 hr 52 min Individual DVD - $20
In his 90’s, Morris is the son of a sharecropper and is superintendent of the Hatiola Hunt Club House – the very plantation house owned by the people for whom he and his father had worked as sharecroppers. The filmmaker starts out to document the old fashioned method of preparing and cooking a hog in the Williston/Springfield (SC) manner, but ends up on a discovery of a far more interesting and complex set of interwoven relationships that leave the South’s residue of the plantation system complex in it’s interwovenness of lives.
Volume Five - From Rockfish and Cush to A Brunswick Stew Monument TRT 1 hr 15 min Individual DVDs - $20
Rockfish Muddle is a documentary about a fish stew that is local to the Roanoke River from the falls below Roanoke Rapids all the way to where it turns into the tidal water that empties into the sound on the coast of North Carolina. J.E. Evans cooks his last Rockfish muddle – a traditional folk heritage foodway rapidly disappearing as modernity and laws against “bow-netting” have turned a generation of vigorous fishermen into storytellers. This is followed by We Just Call It ‘CUSH’ - the video capture of the cooking of a dish that is said to be found only in Piedmont, South Carolina, and is being maintained by Cush master-cook, the Piedmont Fire Department’s Fire Chief. We first learn how little-known the dish is to residents who have moved into the area and those who are too young to remember the days when the textile mill owners allowed their workers to form fishing clubs and hold fish fries where Cush complimented the fried fish. We end with a clip out-take from Stan Woodward’s Brunswick Stew documentaries – an Eagle Scout from Virginia finds himself in a dilemma of truth as he stands at the Brunswick stew memorial at the Interstate rest area near Brunswick, GA.
Five Volumn Package Order - $90.00 by contacting woodwardstudio@charter.net
Make Check Payable to:
The Woodward Studio Limited / P.O. Box 5163 / Greenville, SC 29606
