Henry Glassie: Field Work (2020)

Henry Glassie: Field Work from director Pat Collins is a portrait of the celebrated folklorist and ethnologist Henry Glassie. Inspired by and featuring Glassie, Field Work is an immersive and meditative film set among the rituals and rhythms of working artists in Brazil, Turkey, North Carolina and Ireland. The film displays the director’s trademark eye for details and the process of the artist’s work is awe-inspiring. Glassie’s subject is folklore and art but his deep abiding love for the people who create it resonates throughout the film. ‘I don’t study people’ Glassie says, _‘I stand with people and I study the things they create.’ Artists like the sculptor Edival Rosas from Salvador in Brazil describe their practice as one where body and spirit are integrated, where in Glassie’s words the creative act brings ‘a momentary fulfilment of what it is to be human’.