Southern Journey (Revisited)

Exploring the truths behind the stereotypes of the Southern USA, Southern Journey (Revisited) is both a music documentary and a road movie. Set against the incendiary backdrop of the 2018 mid-term elections, and accompanied by a glorious soundtrack of blues and bluegrass, hollers and spirituals, the film retraces the route of an iconic song collecting trip from the late 1950s -- Alan Lomax's so-called "Southern Journey". Lomax was accompanied on the trip by the not-yet-famous English folk singer Shirley Collins, and the music they collected is an unparalleled single collection of traditional roots music, inspiring a host of folk musicians as well as providing the inspiration for the soundtrack to the Coen Brother's O Brother Where Art Thou. The film travels the back roads of the rural South, and while the focus is on the transcendental roots music of the region, it also contradicts the many reductive stereotypes about the region and offers insight into the historical injustices that underpin the Black Lives Matter movement.