Steven Zeitlin

Aneta Brodski, a deaf teen living in New York City, discovers the power of American Sign Language poetry. As she prepares to be one of the first deaf poets to compete in a spoken-word slam, her journey leads to an unexpected collaboration.

This film looks at the world wide tradition hand clapping games through the eyes of young girls from the greater New York area as they grow through those childhood years when it is central to their social network. Girlhood wit and charm is complemented by more mature reflections of adults who revisit in their childhood memories. Although this rhythmic play is deeply ingrained, traced back to Ancient Egypt and further, its worldly wisdom preserved by generations of girls, stands threatened as technology increasingly impacts our life style globally. Let’s Get the Rhythm is compelling testimony to the value of music in our lives.

This film explores the great themes of the People’s Poetry Gathering: the relationship of oral, written, and musical forms of poetry. Both feature traditional forms such as the Puerto Rican concorso de trovadores (a poetry contest) and literary poets such as Galway Kinnell and Sekou Sandiata, as well as new forms and formats, such as a Heavyweight Poetry Bout between Sherman Alexie and Patricia Smith and a teen slam.

Long before the advent of hip-hop as a multi-million dollar industry, African Americans were rapping and rhyming in the street, in their neighborhoods, and on the fish market docks in Washington DC. In this film, Lincoln Rorie and Jerry Williams use traditional rhymes--and make up a few new ones--to entertain their customers, sell fish, and make money. Lincoln, from D.C., was hired by Captain White’s fish market boat in 1973, and inspired Jerry, from a fishing family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, to use rhyme to sell. It's a remarkable story about a creative tradition in an occupational setting, and about how the expressive spirit takes hold in everyday life.

Academy award winning filmmaker Paul Wagner and folklorist Steve Zeitlin produced this 1983 oral history of the old-time travelling medicine show performers, with a recreated medicine show staged in a small North Carolina town.

In 1974, as part of the Family Folklore Program of the Festival of American Folklife, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., put out a call for families to bring in their home movies and have portions of them copied for a documentary film. More than 100 families responded to the call, bringing in 16 mm and 8mm home movies, as well as photo albums. The result was the documentary, Home Movie: An American Folk Art by Ernst Star, then a student in the film department at Temple University, and Steve Zeitlin, a student in the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania.