Available to rent $9.99
Dec 4 - Jan 8
Directed by Rob Curry & Tim Plester
2020, UK, 75 min
This title is available to rent via Cinematheque at Home for $9.99. This is not only an opportunity for our patrons to see new cinema, but is an important way that they can continue to support independent film during this pandemic with 50% of all sales supporting our theatre.
Exploring the truths behind the stereotypes of the Southern USA, 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 – Alan Lomax’s so-called “Southern Journey”.
Lomax was accompanied on the trip by the not-yet-famous English folk singer Shirley Collins, and the music they collected is an unparalleled single collection of traditional roots music, inspiring a host of folk musicians as well as providing the inspiration for the soundtrack to the Coen Brother’s O Brother Where Art Thou.
The film travels the back roads of the rural South, and while the focus is on the transcendental roots music of the region, it also contradicts the many reductive stereotypes about the region and offers insight into the historical injustices that underpin the Black Lives Matter movement.
Presented in partnership with the Winnipeg Folk Festival.
Reviews
Its commitment to the timelessness of American folk art also means that Southern Journey becomes a film very much of the moment, giving time without judgement to the grey area realities of life in America in 2020.
– Neil Fox, The Quietus
Southern Journey (Revisited) is both a musical exploration and a time capsule — if Lomax and Collins were compiling America’s songs, Curry and Plester are taking the country’s temperature, talking to their subjects about race, class, stereotypes and the political system.
– Tim Grierson, Screen Daily
