Folkerie

Song One starring Anne Hathaway and Johnny Flynn This and the following years will be eventful for us folkies. Who wouldn’t be excited to have a bunch of singer-songwriter movies coming our way? The first one out, from director John Carney who gave us the award-winning movie Once , was well-received by viewers. Begin Again stars Keira Knightley as a musician left on her own in the big city who meets a disgraced record executive played by Mark Ruffalo. “From this chance encounter emerges an enchanting portrait of a mutually transformative collaboration, set to the soundtrack of a summer in New York City.” (The Weinstein Company) Watch the trailer below. In the next film we’ll see Anne Hathaway, but in a non-singing role. It features folk musician Johnny Flynn as a, well, folk musician. I am both curious and delighted because…Johnny Flynn, and I’ve never seen him act yet. The trailer for Song One below. This last clip is not a trailer, yet it may well be a preview of the coming Hank W...

Edward S. Curtis was a renowned photographer and documenter of Native American life in the early 20th century. His works, which include more than 40,000 photographs, are still widely used in different print and digital media: in books, web articles, even music album covers, that those not familiar will have at one time or another seen one. In addition, and this I’ve only recently found out, he’s also directed a 65-minute silent film on the Kwakiutl tribe in 1914 called In the Land of the Head Hunters . The following excerpts and photos are from the Edward S. Curtis collection in Shared Legacies : According to Curtis, his ambition was to photograph “The Vanishing Race.” He therefore embarked upon a thirty year undertaking to document Native American Indian cultures within the immensely ambitious project titled The North American Indian. This comprised of a set of 20 volumes of ethnographic text illustrated with photo-engravings from his glass plate negatives. By 1930 the modest popular...

I feel the need to praise two works of art in this post. Last night I was sent a preview of Irish singer Róisín O’s music video for her upcoming song Hold On . With only a short text to introduce me to this new artist from Dublin, I didn’t have any expectations. So I put on my headphones and watched a moving short film. Yes, you read it right. Ever since outgrowing them, what I miss most about music videos are the stories they tell. This one brought me back to that time when everything felt younger, though what I was seeing on-screen was as old a story can be—about us in our everyday lives, reminiscent of Mike Leigh’s subjects. I couldn’t help that the film itself got my first attention. We see a man with a military haircut wake up at 6:30 in the evening. We suppose he is of Brazilian ancestry because of the flag beside his dining table. There’s something written on his door. He works the night shift… Ahh, the details! Kudos to the director, Simon Eustace , and the cast, Aaron Heffern...

Folksongs & Ballads is an animated short film by Mathieu Vernerie, Pauline Defachelles, and Rémy Paul. Produced in 2011 at Supinfocom as a student project, it gives us 8 minutes of purely beautiful imagery and music, no dialogues. The film is about an old sailor trying to resist inactivity in an isolated port.

There’s a folk movie coming and it’s from highly awarded siblings. Here’s three reasons to watch Inside Llewyn Davis : It’s the Coen brothers and they’re tackling folk music. The movie, which is about a singer-songwriter navigating New York’s folk music scene in the 60s, is currently set to be released early next year. Although highly unlikely, a proper cinematic showing in the Philippines would be very much appreciated by moi and company. Awesomely versatile actor Oscar Isaac will be playing the title character , Llewyn Davis, loosely based on 60s folk musician Dave Van Ronk. From what I’ve seen of Isaac’s previous performances — as charismatic St. Joseph in the Nativity Story, evil King John in Robin Hood, and a scene-stealing antagonist in Sucker Punch — I couldn’t ask for a better lead. By the way, he’s also in the Bourne Legacy, which I still have to watch. All music performances in the movie are played live , not pre-recorded. Just like the new Les Miserables, eh? Looks like we...