Folk and Family Films Subject of Film Series

Actor, writer, philosopher and filmmaker Christian Scheider hopes to educate with two film series he’s hosting this summer.

The first is American Folk: Sight Unseen, which details the work of ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. The second is Precocious Cinema, which showcases acclaimed children’s animated films for discussion about their themes and philosophies.

American Folk will take place at Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton every Monday from 10:15 to 11:30 a.m. starting July 11 and continuing through August 15. Precocious Cinema is screening at the Amagansett Free Library every Wednesday from 5:30 to 8 p.m. until August 31.

American Folk isn’t the first or the last project Mr. Scheider is creating with Mr. Lomax as the focus. He put together a film series on Mr. Lomax’s early life two years ago. It took three months for this new series to come together, and he’s currently writing a screenplay about Mr. Lomax. Mr. Scheider aims to bring his impact on culture to a wider audience.

Mr. Scheider highlights Mr. Lomax’s discovery of folk, blues and jazz artists in the 1930s and 1940s, including Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Jelly Roll Morton. With those interviews broadcast in the early days of radio, Mr. Scheider believes that Mr. Lomax helped America discover a part of its own culture.

“He’s sort of a radically under-appreciated grandfather of American culture,” Mr. Scheider said, sitting comfortably in Marders Cafe in Bridgehampton. “He had this radical idea that the blues guitarist in Mississippi had a lot of fire and that there was a traditional American culture being overlooked. I believe that, for Alan, he saw that music was a way that we could cut through the class divides and racial divides and see people as artists.”

Mr. Scheider learned from Mr. Lomax’s work that it is a duty for people to seek out and document these developing cultures. He believes someone like Jelly Roll Morton, an icon of jazz music, would not have reached notoriety outside of New Orleans had it not been for Mr. Lomax recording him.

“He pioneered this form of ethnography, which was, you sit down, you put a mic, you put a piano, and you ask the musician to tell you his life story. As he’s telling you this, he’s playing the music. This was a radical idea because the means of recording someone was so expensive back then, unless you were going to make money off of it. But by working for the Library of Congress, he flipped that switch and said ‘I can flip the switch on this recording device and I can sit here for five hours and hear the history of New Orleans jazz from Jelly Roll.’”

Precocious Cinema came from the differing film choices between Mr. Scheider and Tucker Marder, his friend and frequent collaborator on projects such as their adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Galápagos." While Mr. Scheider would suggest they watch adult dramas like “There Will Be Blood,” Mr. Marder would suggest something entirely opposite: “The Brave Little Toaster.” While initially garnering laughs, Mr. Scheider eventually noticed something.

“If you choose to view them philosophically or politically, they’re great films and they’re very satirical and funny,” Mr. Scheider said. “I thought, ‘Well, we do all of these adult programs at the libraries, wouldn’t it be great to have a kids’ series but try to maintain discussion-based format. I think kids are much better critics than we give them credit for.”

Mr. Scheider said kids aren’t typically asked what they thought of a movie or what message they took away from certain scenes. He hopes parents will be able to engage their kids more through talking about these films’ messages. Such films to be showcased include Disney and Pixar’s “WALL-E” on June 29, the Japanese animated classic “Spirited Away” on July 6, and Dreamworks Pictures’ “Antz” on July 20. While these films have achieved critical and commercial success in their own right, Mr. Scheider said he hopes the kids will see the hidden ideas the films have to offer, like the satire of American consumerism and environmental warnings in “WALL-E,” or the Marxist themes of “Antz.” But Mr. Scheider hopes whatever happens is as natural as possible.

“Philosophy comes up organically, and I think people should be able to, at least once in their life, define their own worldview. I don’t know what the kids are going to say when they see these movies, but I want to help support them in the opportunity of discussing these films.”

Mr. Scheider is grateful for having the libraries so interested in his work and the support he’s received from Cynthia Young, the director of Amagansett Free Library. He also understands why libraries are still important today: “The beautiful thing about this and why I love libraries is that they don’t have to operate based on what’s commercially viable. They do things because it’s a good idea and I’m forever grateful for that.”

The Precocious Cinema film series will be held at the Amagansett Free Library every Wednesday from 5:30 to 8 p.m. through August 31. Call 631-267-3810 or visit amaglibrary.org for more information. The American Folk: Sight Unseen film series will be held at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton starting July 11 every Monday from 10:15 to 11:30 a.m. through August 15. Call 631-283-0774 or visit myrml.org for more information.

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