Southern Journey (Revisited) is the latest documentary offering from the makers of The Ballad Of Shirley Collins (2017) which retraces the route of an iconic song collecting trip from the late 1950s – Alan Lomax’s so-called “Southern Journey” on which he was accompanied by Shirley Collins. Shirley Collins told the story of that particular trip in her book ‘America Over the Water’, a unique journey undertaken on the brink of the civil rights era. On that trip, they covered Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Georgia – along the way encountering Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters and many others. But that was sixty years ago…a lot has changed in that time.
Exploring the sounds and history of the southern United States, 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 Alan Lomax’s “Southern Journey” – seeking out echoes of the past and clues to the future. The film’s disparate cast of characters help provide a much-needed riposte to certain widely held and enduring beliefs about the Southern US – or the ‘Red’ States as they have come to be known. 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 under serious threat, the film travels beyond reductive stereotypes to explore instead the diversity and complexity of an area steeped in a fertile musical heritage.
Featuring: The Como Mamas, Anna & Elizabeth, Glen Faulkner, The Local Honeys, & Jimmy Edmonds
60 years on, SOUTHERN JOURNEY (REVISITED) follows the route that Lomax and Collins previously traversed – searching for echoes of the recordings they made along the way. Alongside the music, the documentary takes the pulse of a nation, surveying what has and has not changed, for better and for ill, in the intervening six decades. Inspired partly by the negative stereotypes of the South that predominate both in Europe and the rest of America, the filmmakers set out to see for themselves if those stereotypes held any water. What emerges is a rich and varied tapestry that gives the lie to any reductive theories about the people and politics of the land that lies “Away, Away, Away Down South”.
Taking their lead from the manner in which Lomax and Collins approached their trip back in 1959, the filmmakers set out with minimal planning, allowing fate to present subjects as they moved through the landscape. Shot on-the-fly, the film is a deliberately subjective reflection of what was found on-the-ground and in-the-moment.
Southern Journey (Revisited)
Feature documentary. 75 mins
Showing:
Tuesday 6th October
18:30 Genesis Cinema, London + Q&A
Friday 9th October
20:00 Cube Cinema, Bristol + Q&A
Saturday 17th October
15:30 Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast
20:00 Electric Palace, Hastings + Q&A
Sunday 18th October
20:00 Electric Palace, Hastings
November onwards
- Broadway Cinema, Nottingham
- Norwich Arts Centre
- Cube Cinema, Bristol
Please check back on the film website as screenings are being added regularly as they go on sale – https://fifthcolumn.org.uk/Southern-Journey-Revisited