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38-466: It preserves and provides wide access to documentary films about the activities, voices, and experiences of members of America's diverse regional, ethnic, religious, and occupational cultures. The films show a variety of documentary approaches but commonly let the people themselves present their own circumstances, values, and arts. Folkstreams was conceived and developed by filmmaker Tom Davenport in 1999. Encouraged by folklorist Dr. Daniel Patterson from

76-522: A century." When most people think of the word “documentary,” they think of the observational mode that Leacock, Drew, and Pennebaker all played such a huge role in creating. In 1947–1948, Leacock served as cameraman and co-director with John Ferno (Fernhaut) on seven short films in the 'Earth and Its People' series produced by Louis De Rochemont, two in France, and one each in Holland, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, and

114-480: A la Coque de Richard Leacock (84 minutes), the first major film shot with a tiny Video-8 Handycam to be broadcast on prime-time television in France. Leacock and Lalonde continued making films without the pressures of TV producers, notably A Musical Adventure in Siberia , in collaboration with his daughter Victoria Leacock, conductor Sarah Caldwell , and filmmaker Vincent Blanchet . Leacock died on 23 March 2011 at age

152-661: A large truck, a rare achievement at that time. He then spent three years as a combat photographer in Burma and China, followed by 14 months as cameraman on Robert Flaherty's Louisiana Story (1946–48). In the meantime, Leacock had married Eleanor "Happy" Burke in 1941. Daughter of the world-famous literary critic, philosopher, and writer Kenneth Burke , she had studied at Radcliffe College, but graduated from Barnard in New York City. The Leacocks had four children together: Elspeth, Robert, David and Claudia. After ethnographic fieldwork with

190-458: A mobile quartz tape recorder, and we couldn't have cables connecting them." Leacock took the same design as in an Accutron watch and put it in the camera. This allowed proper synchronisation. They then took their design to RCA who showed interest; and after receiving money from LIFE magazine, Drew and Leacock were able to make the first model and shoot their film Primary . As Leacock pointed out, “nothing has really changed since then, I mean it

228-489: A national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures.... [and] to give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet." The site features the work of independent filmmakers from the 1960s and later—including Alan Lomax , Pete Seeger , Les Blank , Davenport, and others —focusing on films that document and preserve the culture and folklife of various American regions and communities. Folkstreams also features explanatory material alongside

266-504: Is a little bit better… basically the same thing." Brian Winston describes Leacock as the father of modern documentary because of this development. "He was the catalyst for the development of the modern documentary, liberating the camera from the tripod and abandoning the tyranny of perfectly stable, perfectly lit shot—as well as the straitjacket of ‘voice of god’ commentary." Winston goes on to note that this new mode of film-making essentially dominated over any other style for “a quarter of

304-532: Is an independent filmmaker and film distributor who has worked for decades documenting American life and exploring folklore. Currently based in Delaplane, Virginia , he is the founder and project director for Folkstreams , a website that houses independent documentary films about American folk roots and cultures. In the winter 2016, Davenport released his follow-up film to his profile of a North Carolina family, A Singing Stream (1986) which he made in partnership with

342-455: Is discussed at length in Sharon R. Sherman's Documenting Ourselves: Film, Video, and Culture (1998). In 2019, Davenport released his latest long form documentary "The Other Side of Eden: Stories of a Virginia Lynching". Davenport developed Folkstreams .net in 1999 as "A National Preserve of Documentary Films about American Roots Cultures." A non-profit organization, Folkstreams aims "to build

380-476: Is like to be there." At the age of 14, he wrote, directed, filmed and edited Canary Bananas (10 min. 16mm, silent), a film about growing bananas, but it did not, in his opinion, give you "the feeling of being there". He was educated at Dartington Hall School from 1934 to 1938, alongside Robert Flaherty 's daughters; David Lack ( Life of the Robin ) taught biology at the school. After filming Lack's expedition to

418-590: The Canary Islands until being sent to boarding schools in England at the age of eight. He took up photography with a glass plate camera, built a darkroom and developed his pictures, but was not satisfied. At age 11 he was shown a silent film Turk-Sib about the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway . He was stunned, and said to himself: "All I need is a cine-camera and I can make a film that shows you what it

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456-560: The Chicago International Film Festival , and the American Film Institute 's American Video Conference, among others. Ashpet: An American Cinderella —perhaps Davenport's most lauded work, released in 1990—has garnered film awards at 18 regional, national, and international film festivals, including seven first-place prizes. Davenport has received numerous grants for his work, including federal grants from

494-584: The Innu (Montagnais-Naskapi) of Labrador , Eleanor Leacock (1922–1987) earned her doctorate in anthropology at Columbia University (1952). Ten years later, after her marriage broke up, she went on to become a pioneering feminist anthropologist. In 1963, he married Marilyn Pedersen West, a painter, writer, and fashion model, who worked for social causes. They had a daughter, Victoria. In 1970 they separated, and remained separated until her death in 1980. Many relatively conventional jobs followed, until 1954, when Leacock

532-669: The National Endowment for the Humanities , the National Endowment for the Arts , The Corporation for Public Broadcasting , the Institute of Museum and Library Services , along with state-level arts and humanities organizations. He is a recipient of a 2021 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts , which is the United States government's highest honor in

570-655: The 1960s is in the East Asian Collection of the University of California, C.V. Starr East Asian Library, UC Berkeley. Richard Leacock Richard Leacock (18 July 1921 – 23 March 2011) was a British-born documentary film director and one of the pioneers of direct cinema and cinéma vérité . Leacock was born in London on 18 July 1921, the younger brother of film director and producer Philip Leacock . Leacock grew up on his father's banana plantation in

608-748: The American Film Festival, and his first feature-length film Willa: An American Snow White (1998) was awarded the 1998 Andrew Carnegie Award from the American Library Association for "Excellence in Children's Video." Soldier Jack, or The Man Who Caught Death in a Sack (1988) took first prize at the International Festival of Children's Films, the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival,

646-544: The Canary and Galapagos Islands (1938–39), Leacock moved to the US and majored in physics at Harvard to master the technology of filmmaking. Meanwhile, he worked as cameraman and assistant editor on other peoples films, notably To Hear Your Banjo Play (1941)—Leacock filmed a folk music festival atop a mountain in south Virginia where there was no electricity, using a 35mm studio camera and 35mm optical film sound recorder with batteries in

684-768: The Chinese martial art of tai chi . In 1970, Davenport settled in Delaplane, Virginia, on his family's land. The following year, he founded an independent film company, Davenport Films, along with his wife, co-producer and designer, Mimi Davenport. The company gained recognition through "From the Brothers Grimm," a series of live-action adaptations of traditional folktales translated into American settings. As fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes notes in The Enchanted Screen (2011), through these films, Davenport "made original use of

722-770: The Landis family who were featured in that film. In 2018, he released a documentary on a 1932 lynching near his home in Fauquier County in Virginia. He continues to oversee the Folkstreams website, as well as help with the management of his family farm in northern Virginia at Hollin Farms. Davenport grew up in Virginia outside Washington, D.C. He received his bachelor's degree in English from Yale University in 1961. After graduating, Davenport

760-579: The Pole (1960), Henri Langlois introduced the films as "perhaps the most important documentaries since the brothers Lumiere ". After the screening, a monk in robes came up to them and said "You have invented a new form. Now you must invent a new grammar!" When Drew went to work for ABC-TV, the Leacock-Pennebaker company was formed and produced Happy Mother's Day , Dont Look Back , Monterey Pop (1966), A Stravinsky Portrait and many others ending with

798-738: The Sahara Desert. In the late 1950s, Leacock produced several educational film shorts for the Physical Science Study Committee , a project based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to improve the teaching of high school physics. A number of films followed made by Drew, DA Pennebaker , Maysles and their associates, but the U.S. networks were not impressed. In France at the Cinémathèque Française , when Drew and Leacock screened Primary (1960) and On

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836-456: The University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, Davenport saw the importance of these films and knew from experience that their natural audiences had difficulty finding and seeing them. Many of the films are old, out of print, rare, and endangered. Others are obtainable only from little-known distributors. Their age and outdated formats, their non-standard lengths, the regional and ethnic speech of

874-505: The age of 89 in Paris. Before his death, he was raising funds for his multi-format memoir The Feeling of Being There: A Filmmaker's Memoir , a bound paper book and DVB (digital video book), published by Semeïon Editions. To Leacock, the process of film-making is a "process of discovery." He did not film to preach his own ideas and his own presuppositions; he wanted to discover the world around him. To him, any type of staging makes no sense, and in

912-440: The audience about the importance of folklore and folklife in the lives of all people, and to encourage filmmakers to deposit copies of their work in archives for long-term preservation. About a half of these are shown with background contextual information about the making of the film and the traditions presented. Most films on Folkstreams are protected by copyright, and the filmmakers have given their permission and encouragement for

950-415: The drilling sequence, which was shot with sound, it was essentially a silent film. And it wasn't till 1960, when we were filming Primary, that we were able to jump into the new world. Frustrated with the obtrusiveness of the process of synching footage and sound, Leacock knew there had to be a way to separate the two. In 1958, the idea became obvious. "We had to have a mobile quartz camera, and we had to have

988-481: The end, comes across as fake. "Usually, if you wait long enough they end up doing things naturally." Leacock believed that if you wait, people will become comfortable with the camera and start acting like themselves. Cameras, he thought, should be small and unobtrusive, though never hidden. You should shoot in sequence if you can, and without interfering or asking for actions to be repeated. Just like in Crisis and Primary ,

1026-517: The fairy tale and film to enhance viewers' understanding of storytelling, politics, and creativity." In 1974, Davenport and Frank DeCola directed and produced, along with Daniel Patterson, a 30-minute documentary called The Shakers , which The New Yorker Magazine dubbed "the definitive film on the Shaker movement." Newsweek called it "a touching, and probably final, glimpse of the Shakers," underscoring

1064-693: The films, providing cultural, historical, and artistic context and significance as a means to educate the public. Davenport received a 2021 National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work developing Folkstreams. In 2009, Davenport was the first scholar to receive the Archie Green Public Folklore Advocacy Award from the American Folklore Society in 2009. This award recognizes individuals "who have made significant contributions to

1102-670: The folk and traditional arts, for his work developing Folkstreams.net. Davenport's collected papers from 1973-1995, along with archival footage from Folkstreams.net, are held in the Southern Folklife Collection at Louis Round Wilson Library, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The collection includes materials documenting the making of Davenport's films, as well as production notes, transcripts, field notes, correspondence, posters and other publicity materials, audiotapes and cassettes, grant applications, and other items. Davenport's still photographic collection from Taiwan in

1140-546: The help of Max Fenton. In 2021 Tom Davenport received a National Heritage Fellowship award from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work developing Folkstreams.net. Gandy dancers [1] Archived 2010-10-24 at the Wayback Machine The High Lonesome Sound This article related to a film organization is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Tom Davenport (filmmaker) Tom Davenport (born June 13, 1939)

1178-717: The importance of Davenport's film. Davenport collaborated with the University of North Carolina Curriculum in Folklore and folklorist Daniel Patterson to direct and produce a series of documentaries on folklife in Appalachia and rural America, including Born for Hard Luck (1976), Being a Joines: A Life in the Brushy Mountains (1980), A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle (1986), The Ballad of Frankie Silver (1998), and When My Work Is Over: The Life and Stories of Louise Anderson (1998). Davenport's collaboration with Patterson

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1216-408: The people they feature, and their unusual subject matters had excluded many from the mainstream mass market television and cable broadcast opportunities in the last half of the 20th century. As of mid 2023, Folkstreams was streaming over 425 such documentaries created since 1949. The goals of Folkstreams are to stream more such films and contextualize them with background essays and notes, to enlighten

1254-515: The preservation and encouragement of folk traditions in the United States ... and [have] advanced the mission of public folklore." Davenport had previously received a Brown Hudson Award from the North Carolina Folklore Society in 1995 for his contributions to the study and preservation of North Carolina folk traditions. Many of Davenport's films have received critical acclaim. The Shakers (1974) documentary received first prize at

1292-589: The remnants of Jean-Luc Godard 's One A.M. – One P.M. (1972). In 1968, he was invited to join Ed Pincus creating a new, small film school at MIT. Because 16mm filming was becoming so expensive, his group developed Super-8 film sync equipment with modified mass-produced cameras that were much cheaper. Many filmmakers emerged from this program, including Ross McElwee ( Sherman's March ). Leacock taught at MIT until his retirement in 1989. In 1989, he moved to Paris, where he met Valerie Lalonde, and they made Les Oeufs

1330-483: The streaming. Folkstreams works with the National Film Preservation Foundation to identify and restore endangered 16mm films. Folkstreams made the website Video Aids to Film Preservation to help the public and conservators better understand the technology of film. The original Folkstreams database platform was created in 2002 by Steve Knoblock, and moved to a Craftcms platform in 2020 with

1368-848: Was asked to make a reportage on a traveling tent theater in Missouri: the first film he had written directed, photographed, and edited himself since Canary Bananas . This film, Toby and the Tall Corn , went on the American cultural TV program, Omnibus , in prime time and brought him into contact with Robert Drew, an editor at LIFE magazine in search of a less verbal approach to television reportage. Another new contact, Roger Tilton, wanted to film an evening of people dancing to Dixieland music spontaneously. Leacock filmed Jazz Dance for him, using hand held camera techniques. Leacock's search for high quality, mobile, synchronous equipment to facilitate observation

1406-883: Was hired through the Yale-China program, which sent him to Hong Kong to teach English at New Asia College for two years. Davenport went on to study Chinese at the East–West Center at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa . As part of that program, he spent a year in Taiwan, where he took an interest in Zen meditation that has continued since. Back in the United States in the late 1960s, Davenport moved to New York City, where he worked as an apprentice with renowned documentary filmmakers Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker . In 1969, Davenport released his first independent film, T'ai Chi Ch'uan , on

1444-403: Was ongoing. Along with fellow film maker Robert Drew , he developed the method of separating the wire from the microphones and the cameras. Leacock explains the problem with Louisiana Story and pre-synchronized sound filmmakers: Like all documentary filmmakers, he [Flaherty] had an identity problem in that period. They couldn't deal with sync sound. It tied them down. Made them rigid… Except for

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