What an excellent film ! You could criticise it for a couple of minutes for a vague-at-best sense of direction, but really you should just sit back and soak it all up. Mark Bilyeu makes a wonderful centrepoint for the film: combining gentle humour with deep feeling about his home and his family. He has a lovely voice to boot, and his music, whether solo or as part of Big Smith, is much like the man (and very good). He is backed in the film, as in the band, by his charming, and huge, cousins. What else ? The close-harmony family singing was beautiful and uplifting, and the sense of community and tradition inspiring. All of this soundtracked with music that was by turns haunting, ancient, raucous, comic, patriotic, and deeply religious. This film, taken together with Search for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, which i also saw at the NFT, compered by Jim White himself, has opened my eyes to America, beyond the terrifyingly narrow-minded view that many Europeans hold of the country, and its countryside people. Now I'm going to go out and find a washboard...