DAMIEN BLAYLOCK
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SHORT FILMS
"We Juke Up In Here: Mississippi's Juke Joint Culture at the Crossroads" is a new film and music project from the makers of the award-winning blues movie "M for Mississippi: A Road Trip Through the Birthplace of the Blues." "We Juke Up In Here" follows producers Jeff Konkel and Roger Stolle as they explore what remains of Mississippi's once-thriving juke joint culture. Told through live music performances, character-driven interviews and rare on-camera blues experiences, viewers are taken below the surface of the quasi-legal world of real Delta jukes -- while it's still living and breathing. Mississippi's juke joint culture may be at a crossroads, but as juke owner Red Paden likes to say, "The Game's for life . . . and that's for damn sure!"
This timely road movie will explore the thriving underbelly of a dying American art form in the land where it began -- Mississippi. Planned as a weeklong journey through the birthplace of the blues, M for Mississippi seeks to capture the proverbial "real deal" in its home where it is most comfortable and authentic -- the jukes, the front yards, the cotton fields. More than just a collection of concert performances, the film will collect the sounds, the images and the feel of both the performers and their native landscape -- an environment essential to their livelihoods and inseparable from their art. Cultivating the fertile ground between such landmark theatrical travelogues as Buena Vista Social Club and Deep Blues, M for Mississippi aims to appeal to more than just the average blues fan. By showcasing such a fascinating foreign land so close to home, the filmmakers hope to inspire countless others to make their own road trips down Mississippi's blue highways.
Filmmaker Damien Blaylock and producer Roger Stolle explore the life and blues of Mississippi-born Big George Brock in the DVD Hard Times. From his days picking cotton to his nights sitting in with blues legends like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Big George Brock has songs to sing and stories to tell about both the good times and the hard times. Filmed on location in St. Louis, Missouri, where he currently lives and around Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he grew up, this stirring musical portrait offers a window into a world rarely seen in the 21st century.
