York Mini Festival This Week

Media and Documentary Projects and the Southern Foodways Alliance, two institutes of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, will present Three Recent Foodways Films by Joe York on Thursday, October 20 at noon in Paul B. Johnson Commons on the University of Mississippi campus. The event is free and open to the public.

“Hot, Wet Goobers” is York’s latest film. It honors Hardy Farms of Hawkinsville, Georgia, the 2011 Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award Winner. Hardy Farms is a family-owned enterprise, in business since 1935, specializing in fresh-dug green peanuts which they sell on the wholesale market, and boil at roadside stands.

A graduate of the Southern Studies Master’s program at UM, York has made more than 30 films with the Southern Foodways Alliance, including the feature-length Saving Willie Mae’s Scotch House. York also made Mississippi Innocence, a film about two wrongly-convicted Noxubee County men exonerated from murder through the Innocence Project, which was shown several weeks ago at the Newseum in Washington and will be screened at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival this week.

This screening recognizes a milestone for the Media and Documentary Projects of which York is an employee.

This fall, Media and Documentary Projects formally joined the College of Liberal Arts as an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. This partnership will ensure that Southern Studies students have access to an excellent filmmaking program as part of their academic studies. The Center’s documentary photography program, led by Dr. David Wharton, has seen significant growth over the years, and the formalization of filmmaking as part of the curriculum will strengthen UM’s already strong reputation as a center for documentary studies.

MDP director Dr. Andy Harper said “When I took over Media and Documentary Projects eight years ago my goal was to find an academic home from which to tell stories of the people and traditions around us. The Center for the Study of Southern Culture has been doing that for over 30 years, and I can’t think of a better place for us to be.”

Joe York Profiled

Joe York is featured in this month’s Garden and Gun magazine.  The article includes a link to Joe’s SFA films and also a photo of the recently deceased schwagon–the car that Joe logged some 40,000 mile in over the last two years while he made all these films.

More Pork from York

Last weekend Joe York premiered his latest film at the Big Apple BBQ Block Party in New York. “To Live and Die in Avoyelles Parish” documents the thriving cochon de lait tradition near Mansura, Louisiana. This film is part of a larger project MDP is producing with the Southern Foodways Alliance called “Southern Food: The Movie”

Cut/Chop/Cook is "Sizzling"

A very nice notice of Cut/Chop/Cook on the Sizzle on the Grill blog where they ask and answer: “What is REAL barbeque? – This.”

The blog goes on to say “The University of Mississippi’s Media & Documentary Projects Center & the Southern Foodways Alliance created this video profile of Rodney Scott, a second generation owner/operator of his family’s destination barbeque restaurant: Scott’s Bar-B-Q in Hemingway, South Carolina.  To my way of thinking this family has wrapped their arms around what it means to cook real barbeque.”

Check out the Sizzle on the Grill blog and enjoy Cut/Chop/Cook.

Blessing of the Fleet

In February, the UM Media & Documentary Projects Center and the Southern Foodways Alliance began work on a year-long project. The result will be a feature-length documentary film “Southern Food: The Movie.” Joe York, who is directing the film, recently returned from a two-week turn along the Gulf Coast where he filmed contestants at the annual FloraBama Insterstate Mullet Toss, oystermen on Apalachicola Bay, and beekeepers in Wewahitchka, Florida, among others.
While Joe was on the coast, the oil spilling from the failed Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico became a matter of grave concern. He decided to stay for another week and interview people along the Gulf from Florida to Louisiana about the oil spill and its impact on their lives.
In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing some of the footage Joe collected, beginning with a short piece shot at the 61st Annual Blessing of the Fleet in Bayou La Batre, Alabama.

Documenting Our Backyard

Here is a Jackson Free Press review of “Smokes and Ears” that came out just before the Crossroads Film Festival–where it won the Best Mississippi Film award. This review sums up the Mission of the Media and Documentary Projects Center about as well as anything I could write.

In a Pig’s Ear
By Bret Kenyon
April 14, 2010

“Smokes and Ears,” directed by Joe York of Oxford, is a 26-minute documentary tells the story about the Big Apple Inn on Farish Street, and its speciality sandwich. Also known as “Big John’s,” the small restaurant’s trademarks are two sandwiches: the Smoke, a spicy ground-sausage sandwich about the size of a Krystal’s burger, and the Pig’s Ear sandwich.

Bet you’ll never guess what that’s made from.

I’ll admit that I gagged a little when I first saw a small child devouring a boiled pig’s ear slapped on a bun. But by the end of the film, I was craving one.

Local history begins to bleed into the narrative as the film’s explains the sandwich origins and ingredients. We learn that the Big Apple was a safe house for planning political strategy during the Civil Rights Movement. We discover that the restaurant was built by a young immigrant who started out selling hot tamales on the street corner, and that the price of a Pig’s Ear sandwich has only gone up approximately a penny a year since their introduction (current price: $1.05). While local Butchers gave the pigs’ ears to the restaurant free of charge, the price of ears has gone up due to their current use as a popular dog’s chew toy.

York, on staff at the University of Mississippi Media and Documentary Projects Center, not only shoots and edits the documentary so well that it looks like a History Channel feature, but he manages to use a local delicacy to tell the story of Jackson’s glory days.

The Southern Food Alliance produced the documentary. Dubbed by the Atlantic Monthly as “this country’s most intellectually engaged (and probably most engaging) food society, the SFA attempts to tell a locale’s history by exploring the roots of its unique cuisine.

I wish more films could do what this film does—find a unique device to tell the history of home. The past few decades have been unkind to Farish Street, but the popularity and stream of musical legends that passed through that place made me wish I could have spent a day there in its prime. Who needs a Bourbon Street or a Beale Street when you have something like this?

The film left me inspired to hold out hope that Jackson can one day regain some of what it once had. In the end, it’s not a documentary about some far away place or people you’ll never meet in a lifetime; it’s a documentary about our backyard.

Reference: http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/index.php/site/comments/in_a_pigs_ear_041410/

Congrats to Joe York

Congratulations to Joe York whose “Smokes and Ears” took home the Ruma Award at the Crossroads Film Festival.  The award, designed by artist Wyatt Waters honors the best Mississippi film.

Joe has had quite a run this last month with screenings of films in California, Arkansas, Mississippi, Georgia, and upcoming in New Zealand.  Joe is also featured this week at the Atlanta Film Festival, where CUD will be screened.  Enjoy Joe’s Q and A with the AFF.

Way to go Joe!

CUT/CHOP/COOK "debuts" at Charleston Food & Wine Festival

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On March 6th, MDP & the Southern Foodways Alliance gave folks at the Charleston Food & Wine Festival a sneak peek at their latest short documentary. The film CUT/CHOP/COOK, a profile of pitmaster Rodney Scott of Scott’s Barbecue in Hemingway, South Carolina, was produced and directed by MDP’s Joe York in association with the Union Square Hospitality Group and will  officially debut at the 2010 Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in New York. We’d like to offer a very special thanks to the good folks at Jim ‘N Nicks Barbecue, who hosted the event which featured the sneak peek. Though we weren’t able to attend the event, the reviews have been amazing. Here’s a great one from Libby Wiersema of SCNow.com:

“The Pee Dee was the unexpected star of the show when the Charleston Wine + Food Festival presented the Pitmaster’s Bourbon & Q Dinner at Jim ’N Nick’s Bar-B-Q on March 6.
Sold-out themed dinners were packing dining rooms throughout the historic district and this popular eatery in the heart of King Street was no different. Guests were greeted at the door with sugar-rimmed glasses of bourbon and led to their assigned seats. In less than half-an-hour, every table and booth was brimming with fun-loving foodies. New friendships were struck and laughter abounded as the bourbon flowed and diners nibbled on pickled shrimp, boiled peanuts and pork rinds.
I was seated across from cookbook author Ted Lee, who was dispelling myths about Bobby Flay’s arrogance (apparently Flay is the “nicest, kindest” food personality on the planet, according to Lee) when the first hint that some home flavor was on the menu came parading through the dining room. The front door swung wide, and two brawny men in red T-shirts advertising Scott’s Bar-B-Que in Hemingway made their way carefully through the narrow aisles bearing a sizzling hog. All eyes were fixed upon the scene. Mouths gaped. Applause rang out. Then they disappeared into the kitchen.
About that time, platters of Jim ’N Nick’s garlicky pork hot links, pimento cheese and liver mousse with wood-grilled bread were laid before us and we dug in, the meat parade forgotten for the time-being. That was followed by trays of freshly roasted Folly River oysters, tender and sweet. All that shucking called for another round of tasty bourbon cocktails, artfully concocted by two of the evening’s guests, Greg Best of Atlanta’s Holeman and Finch Public House and Julian Van Winkle of Old Rip Van Winkle Distillery in Kentucky.
A rowdiness was pervading the atmosphere by the time the course ended. The decibel levels were stretching the limits, and conversations were being shouted. A bluegrass trio was in full swing — if there’d been room to dance, I’m sure some clogging would have accompanied. I noticed a couple of guys struggling to erect a projector screen in front of the door. They didn’t seriously think they could rein this crowd in long enough to show a film, did they? Oh yes they did. But it wasn’t until the first few frames flickered that things started to quiet down. There on the screen was one of the meat bearers from Hemingway. His name is a familiar one in the Pee Dee — Rodney Scott — and the film was a documentary tribute to the way he does business.
I am not kidding when I say that there was perfect silence in that dining room as we witnessed what I can only describe as Scott’s amazing labor of love. As we watched him harvest wood with a chainsaw, stoke fires and flip hogs on his custom cookers, there was a palpable sense of awe developing amongst us. When Scott applied sauce to the hog using a kitchen mop, the entire audience erupted into mad applause. They were tickled by the down-home testimonials of local Scott’s Bar-B-Que patrons. Scott, who was watching from a corner with us, laughed as well, clearly caught up in the building enthusiasm of his newest fan base.
The film faded to black, and as difficult as it was in the cramped space of the room, the awestruck diners leaped to their feet, roaring and shouting and applauding this Pee Dee pitmaster. Crowds of people — many of whom have never heard of the Pee Dee — moved in to shake this man’s callused hands. They hugged him, pounded his back like old friends, asked for autographs, took photographs. When I asked Scott how it felt to be the star of the show, he beamed and said, “Man, it’s unreal. I never thought I’d be here in Charleston and be part of this festival like this. I just can’t believe it.”
Minutes later, plates of Anson Mills grits topped with heaping portions of Scott’s succulent pig were served. Our empty plates seemed a fitting expression of the love we all felt that night for this local barbecue phenomenon.

CUD goes to Hollywood

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CUD, a co-production by MDP & the Southern Foodways Alliance, will screen in Hollywood at the upcoming Going Green Film Festival on April 2&3. One of only thirty films chosen for the festival, CUD is a short documentary film by Joe York which profiles of Georgia cattleman Will Harris. To learn more about the festival, which will take place at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills, CA, check out their website at goinggreenfilmfest.com (Click on the word CUD to watch the trailer!)

MDP Films to be featured at Ozark Foothills Film Festival

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Earlier this year MDP  & our co-producers at the Southern Foodways Alliance were invited by the Ozark Foothills Film Festival to present four films at the festival, which runs from March 26-28 in Batesville, Arkansas. Here’s the write-up in the event from festival director Bob Pest:

“New collaborators also include the UM Media & Documentary Projects Center & the Southern Foodways Alliance, providing the four mouth-watering “foodie” films that make up the “Southern Succulents Food Film Showcase.” Produced by filmmaker Joe York, the movies explore Southern food traditions, from pig ear and smoked sausage sandwiches to North Carolina barbeque.”

To learn more about the festival and to order tickets visit ozarkfoothillsfilmfest.org

CUD chews its way into Atlanta Film Fest

CUD, a short film by MDP producer Joe York, is an official selection of the Atlanta Film Festival! CUD profiles catlleman Will Harris of White Oaks Pastures in Early County, Georgia. Watch the trailer for the film above or check out the film at the Landmark Art Cinemas in midtown Atlanta during the Atlanta Film Festival on Wednesday, April 21st at 9:30 PM or on Thursday, April 22nd at 2:00 PM.

Warren Belasco on Why We Study Food

Recently Warren Belasco, Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, was on campus for the Viking Range Lecture sponsored by the Southern Foodways Alliance.   The Media and Documentary Projects Center was there to record the lecture and our Southern Studies graduate assistant Xaris Martinez edited the lecture for broadcast.  Nicely done Xaris!

Covering the Campus

In addition to our own documentary work and working with student filmmakers, the Media and Documentary Projects Center helps produce and record campus events.  October has been an especially busy month (and we haven’t even gotten to the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium yet!).

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Above: Matthew Graves tests out the system in advance of the M-Club Hall of Fame Ceremony and Andy Harper shoots the SFA Viking Range lecture featuring Warren Belasco.  Below: Micah Ginn sets up the switcher for the Alumni Hall of Fame, and Karen Tuttle helps shoot the Overby Center event honoring member of the 1959 National Championship football team.

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CUD

cud-dvd-covertocropLast Saturday, Joe York’s documentary “CUD” screened in Athens, Georgia, at the Potlikker Film Festival hosted by the Southern Foodways Alliance. The film profiles Will Harris, a cattleman from Bluffton, Gerogia, who raises grass-fed beef cattle at White Oak Pastures, the expansive farm that has been in his family for over 160 years. This film marks a continuation of the partnership between the Media & Documentary Projects Center, the Southern Foodways Alliance, & Whole Foods Market, who provided funding for the production of the film.

To the left is the DVD artwork produced by Joe York and Matthew Graves of MDP. We would like to thank Ole Miss graduate and current Whole Foods associate Kate Medley for the use of her beautiful images in the production of the DVD artwork. Kate did excellent work as a graduate student in Southern Studies here at Ole Miss and she hasn’t skipped a beat in her new role at Whole Foods. Check out some of her great work here.

We would also like to thank Will Harris for his cooperation and graciousness in the making of this film. If you’d like to learn more about Mr. Harris and White Oak Pastures visit whiteoakpastures.com or check out the documentary below.

John T. is Splendid

johntinboothJohn T. Edge was in booth yesterday recording an interview with American Public Media’s The Splendid Table.   The conversation was about the influence of food writer and Craig Claiborne.  Thanks to the modern miracle of ISDN lines we are able to connect live with any studio in the world.

If You Feed Them, They Will Come

 

This last Friday, Matthew Graves showed his film “Feeding the Soul at Jones Valley Urban Farm” for a panel discussion on sustainable agriculture for Green Week. Liz Stagg, one of the panelist who’s spearheading the new Oxford Community Garden said that the film was one of the major inspirations for creating the garden in Oxford and has helped secure a lot of its funding. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the film that highlights the folks at Jones Valley Urban Farm right in the middle of Birmingham, Alabama. Check out their website to learn more about this incredible group.

Going Whole Hog in North Carolina

skylightbbq_web This past week MDP producer Joe York traveled to eastern North Carolina where he shot a short documentary about the Skylight Inn in Ayden, NC. Pictured to the left, the Skylight Inn was named the “BBQ Capitol of the World” in 1979 by National Geographic Magazine. The Jones family, who have been cooking eastern North Carolina-style barbecue since before there was an eastern North Carolina-style barbecue (they’ve been at it since 1830), took the title of BBQ Capitol seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they had a replica of the US Capitol’s dome erected atop their otherwise bare bones barbecue joint.

York’s forthcoming documentary covers this interesting eccentricity of the Skylight Inn and many, many more. The film will debut at the 2009 Big Apple Barbecue Block Party in New York City on June 13th and marks the fourth such film made for the event. Others have chronicled mutton barbecue in Kentucky, evangelical barbecue in Alabama, and so-called barbecued Hot Guts in east Texas.

Check back next month for the finished film.

Feeding The Soul at Jones Valley Urban Farm


In the heart of downtown Birmingham, Alabama lives a small three acre block where big things are happening. Feeding the Soul takes a brief look at the Jones Valley Urban Farm and highlights some of the incredible ways that this small farm is not only giving back to the city of Birmingham but is setting an example for the entire world to follow. Filmed over the course of the 2008 summer harvest, we witness the hardships and triumphs of a farm that’s anything but ordinary.

The Rise of Southern Cheese


The Rise of Southern Cheese from The UM Media and Documentary Project Center.

Artisanal cheeses have been enjoyed and celebrated all over the world. The rich tradition and lore of the cheesemaker has found its way to places where artisanal cheese is not the first thing that comes to mind: the american south. The Rise of Southern Cheese celebrates the people whose passion for artisanal cheese is changing the way people think about traditional southern foods. With stops in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, this film provides a snapshot of the cheese that’s making its way to tables across America.

Buttermilk: It Can Help


Can buttermilk solve the world’s problems? According to Earl Cruze, a dairy farmer and buttermilk maker from Knoxville, Tennessee, “it can help.” (2008)

Working the Miles


Apalachicola Bay on Florida’s so-called Forgotten Coast is world-renowned for its enormous Gulf oysters. This short documentary follows Johnny and Janice Richards, and oysterman and his wife, a shucker, through one day working the area of the Apalachicola Bay known as “The Miles”. (2006)

Hot Chicken


Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville, Tennessee, is half-heaven, half-hell. The chicken that comes out of the kitchen is hotter than fried magma, but for the masochists who eat it day in and day out, going to Prince’s is more than a dare, it’s a way of life.

Mutton: The Movie


“Mutton: The Movie” takes you on a magical journey to the northwestern corner of Kentucky (Owensboro to be exact) where the descendants of the Welsh who settled the banks of the Ohio River don’t count sheep, they barbecue them.

Whole Hog


Whole hog is a paean to the barbecue pitmasters, hog farmers, and butchers of rural western Tennessee, who everyday transform the lowly hog into the edible embodiment of two of the greatest human virtues, patience and hard work. (2006)

Marsaw


Martin Sawyer tended bar in the French Quarter for over 50 years. As a child he witnessed the flood of 1927 and as an octagenarian he fled his native New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina took aim. In this short profile, Mr. Sawyer talks about his time behind the bar and his memories of the Cresenct City. (2006)