Sunday Showcase: Southern Journey (Revisited)

Southern Journey (Revisited) UK theatrical release trailer from Fifth Column FIlms on Vimeo.

Sunday Showcase

Southern Journey (Revisited)
Directed by Rob Curry and Tim Plaster

Sunday, August 29, 1 pm

Free

“This roving, loquacious documentary does it best to pin down the American soul.”—Phil Hoad, The Guardian

Exploring the sounds and history of the Southern United States (including a stop in Letcher County, Kentucky), Southern Journey (Revisited) is both a music documentary and a road movie. Set against the incendiary backdrop of the 2018 mid-term elections and accompanied by a glorious soundtrack of blues and bluegrass, hollers, and spirituals, the film retraces the route of an iconic song collecting trip from the late 1950s–ethnomusicologists Alan Lomax and Shirley Collins’ so called “Southern Journey”–seeking out echoes of the past and clues to the future.

The films haphazard and colorful cast of characters help provide a much-need riposte to certain widely held and enduring beliefs about the South. Made at a time when the hard-won victories of the Civil Rights Movement (which served as the backdrop to the original Southern Journey) are being challenged, the film travels beyond reductive stereotypes to explore the diversity and complexity of an area steeped in a fertile musical heritage. 2020, U.K./U.S., DCP, 74 minutes. Recommended for 12+

CINEMA+ Followed by a discussion with director Rob Curry by Zoom.