Roscoe Holcomb: From Daisy Kentucky Plays The Mead Fest At AMNH 11/13

The 34th Annual Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival at the American Museum of Natural History presents the world premiere of Roscoe Holcomb: From Daisy Kentucky (2010) on November 13, 2010 at 8:30 pm. A post-screening discussion will include a special musical performance by The Dustbusters, John Cohen's band with fellow musicians Walker Shepard, Craig Judelman, and Eli Smith. The Mead Festival (November 11-14, 2010), the longest-running documentary festival in the United States, will also present an in-depth series about the works of the celebrated filmmaker, photographer, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and musician.

John Cohen's earliest films focused on Appalachian music in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia. He later surveyed a wide spectrum of American music and musical performers, including African-American children in the Carolina Sea Islands, cowboys in Arkansas, Native Americans in Oklahoma, and the counterculture street musicians in Berkeley, California, and New York. He has also extensively researched and documented Andean culture and the British and Scottish roots of ballad singing. As a musician, Cohen was one of the founding members of the New Lost City Ramblers, a group that formed in the early 1960s and was central to the revitalization and popularization of folk music. As a still photographer, Cohen focuses on folk musicians and various indigenous tribes in Peru. His new book of photographs, Past Present Peru (Steidl, Gerhard Druckerei und Verlag), documents Andean culture and will be available this fall.

The premiere of Roscoe Holcomb is part of the Mead Festival's special series on Cohen's seminal works highlighting his range as an artist and cultural anthropologist. John Cohen will attend and present each film in the series, which includes:

The High Lonesome Sound (1963). Songs of churchgoers, miners, and farmers of eastern Kentucky express the joys and sorrows of life among the rural poor. This classic film on Appalachia evokes the power of music and religion to help maintain dignity and traditions in the face of hardship.
The End of an Old Song (1972). Set in the mountains of North Carolina, where English folklorist Cecil Sharp collected British ballads in the early 1900s, this portrait of balladeer Dillard Chandler shows his moving dedication to an art form that is being pushed aside by the juke box and mechanized sound.

Peruvian Weavers: A Continuous Warp (1980). Featuring an interview with former American Museum of Natural History Curator Junius Bird, this film documents the ancient Andean Indian tradition of warp weaving, which has been handed down by generations of women for 5,000 years.
Sara and Maybelle: The Carter Family (1983). In a rare filmed performance, Sara and Maybelle Carter demonstrate their characteristic guitar playing and harmonizing on "Sweet Fern" and "Solid Gone."

Pericles in America (1988). This portrait of clarinetist Pericles Halkias, who emigrated from northern Greece to Queens, New York, in hopes of a better life, demonstrates the unifying force of music and the ambivalence of Greek-Americans who earn their living in the U.S. but have their hearts planted firmly in the mountains of Greece.

Carnival in Q'eros (1991). This groundbreaking film shows the Carnival celebrations of a remote community of Indians high in the Peruvian Andes that had never been seen by outsiders, focusing on the spiritual force of the music and the role of anthropologist in documenting an isolated culture.

In Roscoe Holcomb, Cohen revisits the banjo player he first portrayed in 1963's The High Lonesome Sound. Combining intimate footage of Holcomb in his home as well as footage of his family and Appalachian community, the film follows Holcomb's career after a workplace injury forced him into retirement and before he achieved fame for his immense talent.

AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH.ORG)
The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world's preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to explore and interpret human cultures and the natural world through a wide-reaching program of scientific research, education, and exhibitions. The Museum accomplishes this ambitious goal through its wide-ranging facilities and resources. The institution houses 45 permanent exhibition halls, state-of-the-art research laboratories, one of the largest natural history libraries in the Western Hemisphere, and a Permanent Collection of more than 32 million specimens and cultural artifacts. The spectacular Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space, which opened in February 2000, features the rebuilt Hayden Planetarium and striking exhibits about the universe and our planet. With a scientific staff of more than 200, the Museum supports research divisions in anthropology, paleontology, invertebrate and vertebrate zoology, and the physical sciences. With the launch of the Richard Gilder Graduate School in 2006, the American Museum of Natural History became the first American museum with the authority to grant the Ph.D. degree. The Museum is on track for record-breaking attendance this year of approximately 5 million on-site visitors from around the world and has produced exhibitions and Space Shows that can currently be seen in venues on five continents, reaching an audience of millions more. In addition, the Museum's website, amnh.org, extends its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more beyond the Museum's walls.

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