Mutzmag

An upper-class, late 19th-century dining room where a wealthy industrialist presides as "king" sets the stage for this version of "The Frog King," the classic tale about a princess's promise to a frog.

A girl acts spoiled and doesn't want to marry any of the suitors that come for her hand. One guy, who she nick-names "Bristlelip" makes a deal with her father for her hand. The next day "Bristlelip" comes disguised as a peddler, and the girl becomes his unwilling bride. He carries her off to his crude cabin, all the while commenting on her questions about properties. The girl proves to be an unfit (at housework) wife at first, trying her hand at cooking, spinning, basketry, and even sales of pottery to no avail.

A soldier can not return home after he leaves the army, and can not find a job. Desperation drives him to make a deal with the Devil, who makes a bet with him. For the next seven years, he will carry a purse of gold that's always full. However, he must wear a bearskin and neither pray nor wash nor cut his hair in all that time. If he survives, he can keep the purse, but if he dies, the Devil gets his soul.

A portrait of Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson --black harmonica player, singer, and comedian who made his living "busking" on the street and performing in patent-medicine shows touring southern towns. Footage includes excerpts from one of his last medicine shows, videotaped at a county fair in 1972, and material filmed near his home in South Carolina in 1975. The performance includes harmonica solos, songs, a parody of a chanted sermon, folktales and reminiscences, and three buck dances.

In this comic variant of the Grimm's story, The Master Thief, a poor laborer's son wants to marry the dentist's daughter.

Adapted from an Appalachian Jack Tale set in the late 1940s, this tale follows a World War II veteran named Jack who, in return for an act of kindness, receives two magical gifts: a sack that can catch anything and a jar that can show whether a sick person will recover or die. Jack becomes a national hero when he rescues the president's daughter from a serious illness by capturing Death in his magic sack. However, after many years without Death in the world, Jack realizes that he has upset the natural order and releases Death to save humankind from perpetual old age and misery.

A re-telling of Cinderella set in the rural south during World War II

An American 1910s version of 'Snow White' where Willa joins a traveling medicine show to escape her evil step-mother.

An Appalachian version of the classic story of the courage and loyalty of two children abandoned in the forest.

Remembering the High Lonesome is the story of the making of a classic documentary film. It is also a profile of filmmaker, photographer, artist, and musician John Cohen. Through interviews, as well as Cohen's own photographs and scenes from his classic film The High Lonesome Sound: Kentucky Mountain Music, filmmaker Tom Davenport focuses on Cohen's journey to rural Kentucky in the 1950s to document the lives of the people there and his "discovery" of the musician Roscoe Holcomb. Remembering the High Lonesome also examines the birth of a new artistic ethic and counterculture through John Cohen's involvement with the Beat Generation, abstract expressionist painters, and the Folk Music Revival, and explores the role of an outsider documenting the life and arts of an Appalachian community.

Rapunzel imprisoned in a tall wooden tower by a witch, allows a young man to climb her long brown hair to visit her.

During the 1960s, Tom DAVENPORT was commissioned by National Geographic to film in Taiwan. This was his first documentary, in which he captured philosopher NAN Huai-chin practicing Tai-chi at Taiwan’s northeastern coast. Shot with a 16mm camera, the film features sound created by composer Tom JOHNSON.

The Shakers are America's oldest and most successful experiment in communal living. A century ago, nearly 6,000 Shaker brothers and sisters lived together in nineteen communities scattered from Maine to Kentucky. This film (narrated by the filmmaker, Tom Davenport) traces the growth, decline, and continuing survival of this remarkable and influential religious sect through the memories and rich song traditions of Shakers themselves. It includes performances by the late Eldress Marguerite Frost of Canterbury, New Hampshire, and the late Sister R. Mildred Barker, a leading singer and spiritual leader of the Shaker community still active at Sabbathday Lake, Maine when the film was made.

A series of interviews with and performances by the attendees and musicians at the Warrenton, Virgina country music festival in 1972.

This anthology is part 2 of 2, including the Americanized tales of: The Frog King, Bearskin (The Man Who Didn't Wash for 7 Years), Jack and the Dentist's Daughter (The Master Thief), and Rapunzel.

This anthology is part 1 of 2, including the Americanized tales of: Hansel and Gretel, The Goose Girl, Bristlelip (King Thrushbeard), and Soldier Jack or The Man Who Caught Death in a Sack.