The Tunnel of the Bellows

At the forefront of the folk revival movement since the 1950's, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem are a highly influential group of Irishmen. Popularizing the traditional music of their homeland, the Brothers brought Celtic music into America, and remain some of its most avid performers.

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.

Joni Mitchell has been called the queen of folk music and one of the biggest pop stars of the 60s and 70s. Even today, her lyrics and unique guitar style continue to inspire new generations of singers and songwriters.

The story of Nisar Ahmed Khan, told through his children and the people he served, a spiritual guide whose followers still visit his tomb on his birth and death anniversaries. And alongside how his family spends a few days at the village keeping his traditions alive.

Pop sensations the Lovin' Spoonful perform their biggest hits in this collection of television appearances from the 1960s and '70s. Lead singer and songwriter John Sebastian discusses the band, their music and their legacy. Songs include "Summer in the City," "She's Still a Mystery," "Nashville Cats," the hit theme to the sitcom "Welcome Back, Kotter," "Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?" and "Do You Believe in Magic?"

An ethnographic documentary which looks at the relationship between music and work in predominantly rural cultures. It depicts the lives of fisherman, shepherds and farmers and their relationship with music. The film also describes Basque ancestral instruments, with special emphasis on the origin and history of ‘bertsolarism’ (Basque verse singing) as a form of oral communication.

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.

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.

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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 single female voice sings of waiting in her garden for her ‘dark-eyed sailor’ to return from war, bearing the other half of their token, a gimmel ring. Three veterans pass on the road as she waits, and she asks them: “When you were fighting in distant lands, did you think of the home you left?” In reply the veterans relate their recollections. The garden images in the accompanying film represent ‘home’, but also stand for a more general possibility of redemption, of the potential of the past to return at any time, disguised and changed, to renew the present: “Each moment of time is a garden gate,” the song goes, “Through it my love may walk.”

In this interview, conducted for the Criterion Collection in 2014, Elijah Wald, who collaborated with folksinger Dave Van Ronk on his memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street, discusses the people and places central to New York's Greenwich Village folk scene of the late fifties and early sixties - a scene transformed by the arrival of Bob Dylan.

An analysis of the controversy over the participation of women in the Irun and Hondarribia festivity known as Alarde. It is divided into three parts: in the first part, the history, structure, and characteristics of the Alarde are explained; in the second part, the beginning of the conflict and its development in the 1990s; and in the third part, the present situation, reflecting on the present and future of the festival.

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.

Documentary about the blacklisted folk group The Weavers, and the events leading up to their triumphant return to Carnegie Hall.

A documentary about Basque inmigrants who went to USA looking for work and a better future. Basically, Amerikanuak talks about feeling homesick, about struggling in a different country to make a decent living and about being part of a comunity.

Unustatud rahvad (1970 - 1989) by Estonian composer Veljo Tormas is based upon six Balto-Finnic peoples traditions. Collegium Musicale choir brought the songs to different sides of Baltic coasts to liven current citizens connections for fleeting past and strengthen their identity.

Stompin' Tom performs live at the Horseshoe Tavern on Queen St. in Toronto.

An old Brazilian musician, Rato Branco, seeks out the old masters of the 8-bass sanfona in the backlands of Bahia to recover the secrets and traditional touches of the Pé de Bode, as this sanfona is known in northeastern Brazil. The film recounts the friendship between the master Rato Branco and the great musicians of the sertão, revealing the musical memory of this region.

Taken from the European tours organised for American blues musicians between 1962 and 1969, this release features performances by several popular blues artists, including: T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, etc. ( Concerts originally released as a TV special )