While on a trip to America in 2005, we came upon a stack of late
1950s Folkway and High Lonesome Sound albums in a Long Island
junk shop. Back home in France, we noticed the name John Cohen
credited as either producer, musician, graphic artist or photographer
on almost every one of the records.
A few years later, we saw an article in a local French paper
announcing an exhibition of Cohen’s photographic work in a gallery in
Aix-en-Provence. We saw that he would be attending and we jumped
at the chance of meeting him. So, like teenagers, we went records in
hand, hoping for a signature. In the end we got so much more and the
friendship began.
This film is the fruit of this friendship. It struck us that while art
galleries were putting on retrospectives of his visual work and
aficionados were collecting his music, there was little documented
about the man himself and his methods, despite the important role he
had played in both documenting and contributing to American
culture.
And so the idea of the documentary began to take shape. We did as
Cohen would do – we just went out and did it. In 2013, we began to
film him retracing his wandering paths through the rural hinterlands
of the United States, France, Germany and as far afield as the high
mountains Peru. Cohen gave us unlimited access to his archives, to
the music, the photos, the films.
The idea was to pull together into one film the story of the man, his
music, his films and his photos. All of which provide a unique
perspective on this period of American culture. And its not just us
that felt this. In 2013, the Library of Congress finally acquired his
entire body of work for the American public. So this is not only for the
banjo players and photography lovers .