In partnership with Cambridge Folk Festival, BFI have selected folk music-related films and old TV reports to watch for free on the BFI website.
They include the 1966 “Travelling for a Living“, a road documentary on The Watersons, which Derrick Knight directed. It’s one of my favourites and was included in the Topic Records boxset “The Watersons: Mighty River of Song” (TSFCD4002). Shot in black and white on 16mm film, it really does captures the cold and discomfort of travelling in their van from one folk club to another. The homelife clips are pure magic and include appearances from other folk singers of the time, including Anne Briggs and the late Louis Killen (Louisa Jo Killen). There are also some great scenes of them recording in the studio and researching folksongs at Cecil Sharp House.
Another folk artist documentary is 1987’s The Long Tradition, a 50 minute documentary on a young 20-year-old Kathryn Tickell which “roots her music at home: the North Tyne country, wilful, remote, rich with Reivers history, and the tunes and ballads of shepherd musicians from whom she learns her craft.”
Another great is In One End from 1977 by Emmy award-winning director Luke Jeans which “captures the atmosphere of Southwold with evocative scenes of local people at work on sea and land, harvesting the barley and brewing Adnams ale, traditionally delivered by heavy horses.” It also features performances from Fairport Convention performing John Barleycorn ‘and the pleasures of the beautiful brew enjoyed in the local pub.’
Some of the other films included are The Bardney Pop Festival (1972) alongside farmyard performances from The Bonzo Dog Band in ‘The Adventures of the Son of Exploding Sausage‘. The latter is tame compared to the bizarre 1971 insight into minstrel hippie communal life in Devon – Red Red? Red.
Keeping to the South West is the 1971 short TV report on Glastonbury’s second festival titled Glastonbury Festival and the First Pyramid Stage…a much smaller festival (around 12,000 in attendance at the time). Focusing more on the music is Story of the Hare Who Lost His Spectacles from 1973 – a theatrical psych-prog-folk-rock fairy tale from English eccentrics Jethro Tull.
Below is a short trailer in which BFI curators William Fowler and Vic Pratt talk about the films you will see and why they picked some of these wonderful archival gems. They do mention Border Weave from 1942 (about the ‘the girl weavers’ of the Scottish borders) which I couldn’t see on the main page but is here.
You can watch them all here: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/collection/cambridge-folk-festival