Self
Les Blank brings us the life and work of self-taught, visual artist Butch Anthony, who hails from the small town of Seale in Southeastern Alabama. Butch is a rare individual with a unique ability to see the potential in objects that others take for granted. He is considered one of the top naïve artists in Alabama, and, as his artwork is shown in museums around the country, he is becoming a national treasure. Blank’s camera follows Butch to various folk art festivals around the South, visiting the friends and artists who inspired him to create art. Blank also observes Butch’s life in Alabama’s rural landscape. From ‘coon hunting to “calling up” alligators and digging up fossils, Butch Anthony shows us a South not known to many outsiders.
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6.0Color footage of inventor George Washington Carver at Tuskegee University in Alabama. Dr. Carver is filmed at his apartment, office, laboratory, and garden.
4.0Follow four young women as they prepare to rush at the University of Alabama in 2022. Against the viral backdrop of #BamaRush on TikTok, and the long-held tradition of sorority recruitment at the University of Alabama, the film explores the emotional complexities and high-stakes of belonging in this crucial window into womanhood.
Follows the young people of Selma, Alabama's RATCo (Random Acts of Theatre Company) as they journey to New York City to share their story of hope, resilience, and overcoming.
By showing the performances of the Ayrudzi troupe in Armenia, the film acquaints the audience with one of the most interesting phenomena of national culture – shadow theatre.
7.8Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice. The film exposes a legacy of physical abuse of black women and reveals Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story.
10.0A look at the world of squirrels in the forests of Alabama
6.0Composed of intimate and unencumbered moments of people in a community, this film is constructed in a form that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South - trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.
6.0In 2007 Mobile, Alabama, Mardi Gras is celebrated... and complicated. Following a cast of characters, parades, and parties across an enduring color line, we see that beneath the surface of pageantry lies something else altogether.
0.0A film documenting the soulful art, environments, and voices of self-taught artists on the back roads of the American South.
5.0"Christmas, Every Day" gives a slice-of-life glimpse of preteen influencers Peyton and Lyla Wesson, ages 11 and 12, as they perform for their online fans under their mother’s watchful guidance. Shot in a series of highly composed, locked-off takes, the film examines everyday cultural practice under late stage capitalism, juxtaposing rural life with the patina of the virtual world. As Peyton and Lyla shift between performance and reality, ideas of self-presentation as empowerment, female confidence, and self-branding come to the fore.
0.0A documentary based upon the lives of outsider folk artists Ronald and Jessie Cooper. They became artists in their mid-fifties while living on disability after having lost their Kentucky country store, enduring multiple heart attacks, and being seriously injured in an automobile accident. The story is told through the voices of their four children as well as pioneers of the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, KY who gave the Coopers their start. The film is an account of their life tragedies and triumphs based upon the messages told throughout their artwork.
0.0When one thinks of the American Deep South, the image of veiled Muslim students strolling the University of Alabama campus is the last thing that comes to mind. VOICES OF MUSLIM WOMEN FROM THE US SOUTH is a documentary that explores the Muslim culture through the lens of five University of Alabama Muslim students. The film tackles how Muslim women carve a space for self-expression in the Deep South and how they negotiate their identities in a predominantly Christian society that often has unflattering views about Islam and Muslims. Through interviews with students and faculty at Alabama, this film examines representations and issues of agency by asking: How do Muslim female students carve a space in a culture that thinks of Muslims as terrorists and Muslim women as backward?
4.0Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, a generational football talent, embarks on a journey that began from a childhood family prophecy. Follow Tua as he attempts to overcome a career-threatening injury and rise as one of the most uniquely skilled players in the history of the game.
0.0Two storytellers put forth their versions of the story of Shravan Kumar. The art for the film uses painted images from a wooden portable shrine called a Kaavad. The film is a collaborative work between traditional Kaavad storytellers and Kaavad artists from Rajasthan, together with the filmmaker. Combining lush animation with live-action, the film is an interpretation of two stories which are forever fused in the act of telling and retelling.
0.0Deaf artist James Castle drew on his upbringing in rural Idaho as well as his profoundly silent inner world to create haunting paintings, sculptures and collages. He often used found objects and homemade tools to bring his vision to life. This documentary relies on interviews with Castle's family, art historians and prominent members of the hearing-impaired community to explain his inspirations, techniques and lasting legacy.
6.0Chewing gum sculptures, a wealthy gallerist, a notorious murder case, and the segregated south - it's all part of Nellie Mae Rowe's boundless universe. This World Is Not My Own reimagines this self-taught artist's world and her life spanning the 20th century.
Filmed 2 years before his death, this documentary portrays New Brunswick folk artist Joseph Sleep (1913-1978) in his later life. He was born at sea and worked with and around boats, fish, carnivals, and animals most of his life. While convalescing during an extended period in the Halifax infirmary in 1973, he was encouraged to paint. What began is therapy and a pastime developed into a way of representing a lifetime of images and experience
Several victims come forward with tales of an unspeakable creature plaguing Jasper, Alabama.
0.0A portrait of Leonard Knight and his visionary monument, Salvation Mountain. Painted with 18 coats of donated latex paint, Salvation Mountain, was created over many years, and shows how one man's determination and faith can make for quite a majestic achievement.