Lifted from another list.

There's an NEH supported project to video stream films about American Traditional Culture.

The prototype is up and includes these complete films: "Born For Hard Luck" (Peg Leg Sam Jackson), "Sweet is the Day" (Sacred Harp), "A Singing Stream" (African American Family), and Les Blank's "Dry Wood".

Go to http://www.folkstreams.net/homepage.html

You should be able to watch the films if you have a broadband (dsl or better) connection. They are hard to watch with a dial up modem, although if you may be able to see a rough version with a 56kps connection. Please try it.

The side bar menu is nonfunctional and is there only to indicate content and navigation design. However, the links in the films themselves should be fully functional. All the films have extensive notes and commentary. Of particular interest are the Java pop up notes in the transcript for "Dry Wood".

The prototype was used to work out how the contextual materials could be displayed and how long it would take to prepare and mount them. We needed to get an idea about how much work would be involved with each title.

The project is supported by an NEH planning grant. We are up for a full project grant this year and we know about this in July. If the grant comes through, we plan to mount about 50 films on the site.

Please send your feedback to folkstreams2@aol.com.