The Singing Stream: Reunion

This is a short preview trailer. You can watch the entire film at no charge on the Folkstreams website. Folkstreams is a nonprofit whose mission is to find, preserve, contextualize, and stream documentary films on American folklife.

Watch the entire film at Folkstreams

This documentary continues the story of the Landis family of Creedmoor, NC into the 21st century. The first film A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle was broadcast on PBS in the late 1980s. That film is the only film ever made about the history of an African American family. The new film continues the history of the family roughly 35 years after the first film was released. Bertha Landis died in 2000 at the age of 102. Shortly after, most of her 11 children died. Only two survived today: her youngest daughter Priscilla Landis Daniel and her youngest son Claude. Both live close to the home farm, and Priscilla lives on it.

One of Bertha's children, Fleming Landis, left North Carolina in 1947 for work in the tire factories in Akron, Ohio. Fleming was a great singer and his daughters Karen and Sharon continue that tradition in a female gospel group called the Echoes of Heaven. The home farm is no longer farmed and the land has been subdivided into small lots owned by family members. Claude Landis' daughter Lisa Landis Hunt and her husband now own the home house which they have repaired after years of neglect. That modest farm house is a reminder of Bertha's continued influence on the family, especially for the grandchildren who remember her.

  • Film by: Tom Davenport
  • Produced by: The Landis Family
  • Cinematographer: Tom Davenport
  • Sound: Iverson Landis, Sarah Bell, Barry Dornfeld, Thomas Owens
  • Editor: Tom Davenport
  • Other Credits: Family producers: Ken Daniel, Dennis Daniel, Efrem Daniel, Iverson Landis. Advisors: Dan and Beverly Patterson.
  • Funding: The National Endowment for the Arts
  • Original Format: AVCHD
  • © 2016, Folkstreams, The Landis family, & Tom Davenport
  • 57mins, Color