A documentary portraying the life of Norwegian folk singer Lillebjørn Nilsen. Lillebjørn's talent brought him into the limelight as a shy 15-year-old. This is his own story about music, fame and an eternal longing for peace.
Lillebjørn Nilsen
as Himself
Filmed with four cameras, over two shows at Union Hall, Brooklyn, on October 27th, 2008, this film is especially for those of you who miss the live experience: the sweat, the proximity, the forgotten lyrics. This is far better than a Zoom show with me sitting at my desk: it looks and sounds beautiful. It’s what you really want to see (as opposed to being the only thing we can bring you) and it’s the absolute closest thing to being at one of my shows. And - as luck would have it - I’m playing all your favorite songs. How do I know? Because we asked you to choose the setlist way back then, and you did.
Appalachian Journey is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). It offers songs, dances, stories, and religious rituals of the Southern Appalachians. Preachers, singers, fiddlers, banjo pickers, moonshiners, cloggers, and square dancers recount the good times and the hard times of rural life there. Performers include Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray and Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Workman and Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, and others, with a bonus of a few African-Americans from the North Carolina Piedmont.
Through concerts and interviews, folk-progressive group Harmonium takes Quebec culture to California. This documentary full of colour and sound, filmed in California in 1978, recounts the ups and downs of the journey of the Quebec musical group Harmonium, who came to feel the pulse of Americans and see if culture, their culture, can succeed in crossing borders.
Documentary - Tracing his career up to the point of his 1966 motorcycle accident and subsequent disappearance from the spotlight, this unauthorized documentary uncovers a side of Bob Dylan never revealed before. Includes extensive interviews and rare footage. - Mickey Jones
Following folk musician Joan Baez on her extensive 2008-2009 tour, this film commemorates her career, which has spanned five decades. It includes concert and archival footage as well as interviews with such disparate colleagues, friends and admirers as Bob Dylan, Jesse Jackson and David Crosby. In addition to the music, it also touchs upon Baez's long history of global social activism.
As a sci-fi obsessed woman living in near isolation, Beverly Glenn-Copeland wrote and self-released Keyboard Fantasies in Huntsville, Ontario back in 1986. Recorded in an Atari-powered home-studio, the cassette featured seven tracks of a curious folk-electronica hybrid, a sound realized far before its time. Three decades on, the musician – now Glenn Copeland – began to receive emails from people across the world, thanking him for the music they’d recently discovered.
Two strangers, both folk musicians stranded in California, take a road trip to New York in the days after 9/11. A story about the kindness of strangers and the power of music.
Norwegian researcher Petter Amundsen claims to have deciphered a secret code hidden in legendary playwright William Shakespeare's works that reveals a map leading to the location of certain treasures. British Shakespearean scholar Robert Crumpton embarks on a mission to prove he is spectacularly wrong. (A remake of “Shakespeare: The Hidden Truth,” including new discoveries.)
The chronicle of the process, ten long years, that led to the end of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna), a Basque terrorist gang that perpetrated robberies, kidnappings and murders in Spain and the French Basque Country for more than fifty years. Almost 1,000 people died, but others are still alive to tell the story of how the nightmare finally ended.
Documentary about the blacklisted folk group The Weavers, and the events leading up to their triumphant return to Carnegie Hall.
Heinz Strunk, plagued by crater-like skin rashes, lives with his sick mother in Hamburg-Harburg in the 1980s. As a saxophonist, he tours the North German lowlands with the dance combo "Tiffanys". In this bizarre universe of Korn, Klaus & Klaus and Koteletts, bandleader Gurki teaches him how to deliver cheerful, upbeat music. To escape the vicious circle of shooting festivals and village weddings, Heinz wants to start a solo career and become a hit producer...
Three eclectic, never-quite-famous folk bands come together for the first time in decades following the death of their manager to put on an reunion concert in his honor, at the request of his son.
This live set, containing twenty of Jonathan Coulton’s most popular songs, was filmed in February 2008 in front of a sold out crowd at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, California.
This television special is a first for the reclusive singer with the BBC documentary gaining new interviews with Young, nine months apart in New York and California. The documentary also looks back over the singer's archives, with some never-seen-before material.
In March 2005, Neil Young was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. Four days before he was scheduled for a lifesaving operation, he headed to Nashville, where he wrote and recorded the country folk album Prairie Wind with old friends and family members. After the successful operation and recovery period, he returned to Nashville that August to play at the famed Ryman Auditorium, once again gathering together friends and family for this special performance.
During a decade rife with paranoia, in the middle of the McCarthy era, Music Inn was a bold experiment. Halfway between the Second World War and The Civil Rights Movement, Phil and Stephanie Barber created an oasis in the Berkshire Hills in Western Massachusetts where aspiring musicians came to learn from the very best. Students and faculty, young and old, rich and poor, white, black, and brown convened together and learned from each other. Defying the surrounding environment, Music Inn harbored a racial and cultural harmony where music was all that mattered.
A square rich boy wants to make it with a pretty folk singer, so he buys the coffee house where she and a bunch of other beatniks perform. Features performances by The Goldebriars, The Free Wheelers, and a very young Joan Rivers doing a stand-up routine.
The history of American popular music runs parallel with the history of a Russian Jewish immigrant family, with each male descendant possessing different musical abilities.
The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song will honor either a songwriter, interpreter, or singer/songwriter whose career reflects lifetime achievement in promoting the genre of song as a vehicle of artistic expression and cultural understanding. Paul Simon, one of America's most respected songwriters and musicians, was the recipient of the first annual Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Named in honor of the legendary George and Ira Gershwin, the award recognizes the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world's culture.
