skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Jeremy Marre's Chase the Devil: Religious Music of the Appalachians (Beats of the Heart, 1983) gives us a glimpse of various interrelated religious, music and social scenes circa 1980. Like others in the Beats of the Heart series, it's got a lot of raw and exciting up-close footage set within the broader contexts of place and cultural outlook.
In Chase the Devil, one can see the inflow and outflow of musical ideas, with Nashville as a sort of Mecca to some and "Devil's shrine" to others residing in proximate mountain pockets. There's gospel, bluegrass, folk blues, country and holy roller types of music, and mixtures of them all. You want coal miner protest songs? They're there. Snake handlers and poison drinkers and those drunk in the fruits of the holy ghost, speaking in tongues? They're there. Well worth checking out? Why, a big YES! Can I get a witness? Amen, brothers and sisters!
Today's Rune: Opening.
Julia Newman's Into the Fire: American Women in the Spanish Civil War (2002) looks at its subject from the perspective of women from the USA who volunteered to go to Spain in the late 1930s, ranging from nurses and drivers to the writers Dorothy Parker and Martha Gellhorn, and including the latter's urgent correspondence with Eleanor Roosevelt. A sampling of the eighty or so American women directly involved in the conflict are given voice and image. Filled out with fantastic archival footage, this is an excellent contribution from an international anti-fascist women's perspective of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The advances in motion picture film after the Great War of 1914-1918 give a more contemporary feel to this war, and the examples of footage shown here do great service. Well done. This documentary serves as a general introduction to the whole conflict and also as a special focus on the American women engaged in it. The DVD includes extra goodies.
Today's Rune: Defense.
