"A Century of Folk Customs and Ancient Rural Games"01 February 2011Factual365 mins
From the sexy, savage Cornish May Day rites of Alan Lomax's Oss Oss Wee Oss, to Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane's footage of ferociously fought traditional football; from children's games in London's bombed East End to intricate sword and step dances, this collection of poetic documentaries, long unseen television reports and rare silent film footage reveals just how powerful and enduring the folk traditions of Great Britain have always been. The silent films feature innovative fiddle and melodeon accompaniments by contemporary folk musicians.
Filmed in Cordoba, Granada, Seville, and Toledo, this documentary retraces the 800-year period in medieval Spain when Muslims, Christians, and Jews forged a common cultural identity that frequently transcended their religious differences, revealing what made this rare and fruitful collaboration possible, and what ultimately tore it apart.
First broadcast in 1987 on the UK's Channel 4, Bombin' is a documentary about Afrika Bambaataa's Zulu nation bringing American hip-hop culture to the UK for first time.
To discover the truth behind the mysterious objects her uncle brought back from the Far East during her childhood, filmmaker Francesca Lixi embarks on a journey to those places through archival footage.
"If it Won’t Hold Water, it Surely Won’t Hold a Goat" is an intimate meditation on the subversive nature of goats and their effect on the people who spend time with them.
Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared.
To win the celebrity and self-made wealth he craves, an aimless, twenty-something Manhattan playboy devises a film based on his party-boy, club-going lifestyle, and hires a self-destructive aspiring playwright to ghost the feature script.
When Jack crosses paths with a woman from his past, he's not sure if it's love...or if she's a ruthless con artist using him to find the fabled Fountain of Youth.