Stan Woodward

Mystery and Imagination is a British television anthology of classic horror and supernatural dramas. Five series were broadcast from 1966 to 1970 on ITV and produced by ABC and Thames Television.

Shadows is a British Supernatural television anthology series produced by Thames Television for ITV between 1975 and 1978. Extending over three seasons, it featured ghost and horror dramas for children. Guest actors included John Nettleton, Gareth Thomas, Jenny Agutter, Pauline Quirke, Brian Glover, June Brown, Rachel Herbert, Jacqueline Pearce and Gwyneth Strong. The series was also notable for reviving the character of Mr. Stabs. Notable writers for the series included J. B. Priestley, Fay Weldon and PJ Hammond.

Button Moon is a quirky, popular children's television programme broadcast in the United Kingdom in the 1980s on the ITV Network. Thames Television produced each episode, which lasted ten minutes and featured the adventures of Mr. Spoon who, in each episode, travels to Button Moon in his homemade rocket-ship. All of the characters within the show are based on kitchen utensils, as well as many of the props. Once on Button Moon, which hangs in "blanket sky", they have an adventure, and look through Mr. Spoon's telescope at someone else such as the Hare and the Tortoise, before heading back to their home on 'Junk Planet'. Episodes also include Mr. Spoon's wife, "Mrs. Spoon", their daughter, "Tina Tea-Spoon" and her friend "Eggbert". The series ended in 1988 after 91 episodes.

What is Chicken bog? Folks in surrounding states are likely to give you a blank stare if you mention it. Chicken bog is a delicious chicken, rice and sausage dish, and it’s very much a South Carolina thing. Specifically, chicken bog is most popular in Horry County, the home of Myrtle Beach and Conway and west to Florence. It’s closely related to chicken pilau (or pilaf or perlo), except that it’s … well, boggier.

After her father's death, Maud, a young heiress, is sent to live with her Uncle Silas. She finds her new guardian living in a gothic nightmare of a mansion, and soon realizes that he wishes to murder her and claim her inheritance.

Meet Jimmy Oglers, owner of Oglers store and creator of his award winning turtle stew. Jimmy brings us along as he celebrates National Turtle Day in Sutherland, Va., and prepares for the traditional communal cooking of the prize winning turtle stew at his cabin in the woods.

The original feature length version - BRUNSWICK STEW : A Southern Americana Folk Heritage Tradition - was produced for the people of Brunswick County, Virginia, who honor this tradition and maintain it through a system of stewmasters and stew crews who cook for their constituent community. This documentary premiered at the Virginia State Fair on "Brunswick Stew Day" in 1998. It was a day devoted to the stewmasters and stew crews from Brunswick County which lays claim to being "The Original Home of Brunswick Stew". The stewmasters and crews each cooked their unique recipes for their stew which fair attendees sampled. In the afternoon the stewmasters were paraded thriugh the fairgrounds and taken to an auditorium where friends, relatives, invitees, and folks from all over with Brunswick County roots attended the "World Premier" of this documentary. Each stewmaster received special recognition with a framed citation signed by the Governor noting these men as "Virginia Treasures".

A stew prepared by farmers and hunters, burgoo dates to the pioneer days of the Kentucky frontier. The origin of its name is unclear, and ingredients vary regionally, but the passion for burgoo is reflected in the title given to the chefs: “Burgoo Kings”. Loyal stew masters rigorously maintain recipes and cooking traditions across generations. And with making burgoo comes a lot of leg-pulling, tall tales, and fellowship around the pot.

A spherical opening in a steel girder of the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge provides a bird's eye view of the Mississppi River below. A stationary camera perched over the hole records ambient sounds and the symmetrical rhythms of the waves and passing vessels.

Begun by traveling Methodist preachers in 1786, camp meeting services have been held annually ever since at the Cattle Creek Campground. The entire campground was rebuilt after burning during a forest fire in the late 1800s. Many of the standing tents are well over a century old. Of course, anyone who has seen the campground realizes that these "tents," as they are called, are wooden buildings with either sawdust or hay on the ground. but the addition of electricity, and rudimentary plumbing has made them somewhat more comfortable than they were 200 years ago.

Every year Brunswick, Georgia, holds a festival called Stewbilee to celebrate their invention of Brunswick stew--a claim also made by Brunswick County, Virginia. Stew-masters from far and wide in Georgia gather--and often stew-masters from Virginia too whenever a "Stew War" competition and stew cook-off occurs--gather and compete for awards for best stew under a strict "Cook Off Rules." A panel of judges is invited to sample-taste the stews and vote for the ones they prefer. After learning that folklorist Dr. John Burrison was invited to be a judge at the festival, Stan asked Burrison, who had served as advisor on a number of his films, to join him as he documented the festival.

Members of a branch of the Holiness churches who base their religious beliefs and practices on Bible verses, especially Mark 16:18. The members handle serpents, hold fire to their bodies, speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick and cast out devils.

Cypress Methodist Camp Ground was established as early as 1794, when Bishop Asbury preached here. Serving crowds too large for church buildings or homes, the camp ground responded to both religious and social needs. A vestige of the Great Awakening in American religious life at the start of the nineteenth century, it has had uninterrupted use as a site for revivalism for almost 200 years. It is one of only a few camp grounds in South Carolina to still host annual week-long camp meetings.

Chicken bog is a delicious chicken, rice and sausage dish, and it’s very much a South Carolina thing. If you mention it, folks in surrounding states are likely to give you a blank stare. It’s closely related to chicken pilau (or pilaf or perlo), except that it’s … well, boggier. It’s moister than chicken perlo, which is more common in Georgetown County, just to the south of Horry County. The name “bog” probably comes from the wetness of the dish, although some speculate that it may come from the bogginess of the area where it is popular.

Carolina Hash starts with establishing as fact the myth that hash-popularity ends at the South Carolina borders. We learn that right across the state line in North Carolina, barbecue customers and restauranteurs "....don’t even know what hash is." The Brunswick stew states of North Carolina and Georgia which border South Carolina for the most part don’t know about it. But the tradition runs deep in all of South Carolina, and most native South Carolinians not only know about it - they can tell you where to go "....to get the best hash in South Carolina!" and the name of the hash-master.

This spontaneously-shot surprising documentary looks across the South to see the connections between the folk heritage traditions of communal cooking in gigantic black iron pots stirred with wooden paddles maintained into the 21st century by culinary folk artisans called “stewmasters” with their stew crews. With wit and humor, Southern Stews carries us from Kentucky and Virginia into Georgia and South Carolina to discover ancestral stews that honor an agrarian past and contain the blended history of our European, African, Native American, and frontier settler roots in one-pot meals.

For many families at Cattle Creek Campground, the annual camp meeting signifies a time of fellowship when families can spend a week away from the hectic pace of modern life. Children learn that they can live without air conditioning and television. During the day, they engage in water fights or make numerous visits to the "store," where cold pineapple sherbet is sold. Grownups sit in lawn chairs in the front or back of their "tent" and talk about the latest news, how the children are growing up and what has happened since the last camp meeting. And there is plenty of food. Everyone prepares an abundant supply of their best recipes. Nightly preaching is scheduled at the tabernacle, a large, open structure with a tin roof, wooden benches and a gravel floor. Many a young child has kicked the gravel there to watch the dust fly and then been admonished by a watchful mom or dad, in some cases both.

The Governor, two Georgia State Senators, a “man-on-the-street” in Atlanta, and folklorist, John Burrison speak in one voice authenticating Brunswick stew as a most beloved folk heritage stew of Georgia. The filmmaker reaches back into The Woodward Studio Folklife Archives in making this in-depth story of the origins of Brunswick stew in Georgia, ending up with freshly-shot footage of the Stewbilee in Brunswick, GA, where we hear from a member of the Georgia Sea Island Singers about her ancestors from the days of slavery who cooked Brunswick stews. This is truly a “roots” story about the origins and celebrations around this folk heritage stew of Georgia.

This is a remarkable "inside" glimpse into Southern folk culture and the roots of Southern "raconteurship" at it’s most authentic and best. The short work is edited from the archival footage gathered while the filmmaker was producing the CINE Award-winning, Carolina Hash: A Taste of South Carolina.

Filmmaker Stan Woodward is joined by South Carolina folklorist Saddler Taylor in this “road film” that travels a spontaneous investigating-and-recording-as-you-go journey through the farm roads and by-ways of four rural South Carolina counties. There, they find home cooking and barbecue prepared by folk-heritage culinary food artisans using ancestral recipes and methods that have been passed on to them by mothers cooking over wood-stoves and fathers cooking in BBQ pits dug in the ground.