Bernard MacMahon

Bernard MacMahon is an Irish-British filmmaker. His American Epic films are widely considered as the definitive portrait of a musical era, and one of the best music documentaries ever made. Early life Bernard MacMahon was born in England and grew up in South London. He developed an interest in early American cinema at a young age and was shooting and editing 8 mm short films by the age of 12. MacMahon said “America has fascinated me since I was a child. My big love is American cinema, especially early American cinema, and I’ve always been fascinated by that period in the 20s when the technology and artistic language of film was being invented.” Film career Bernard MacMahon's debut film was American Epic, an award-winning documentary film series about the first recordings of roots music in the United States during the 1920s and their cultural, social and technological impact on North America and the world. Directed and co-written by MacMahon, the story was told through twelve ethnically and musically diverse musicians who auditioned for and participated in those pioneering recording sessions; The Carter Family, the Memphis Jug Band, Elder J.E. Burch, The Williamson Brothers, Dick Justice, Charley Patton, The Hopi Indian Chanters, Joseph Kekuku, Lydia Mendoza, the Breaux Family, Mississippi John Hurt, and Blind Willie Johnson. The film series was created, written and produced by MacMahon, Allison McGourty and Duke Erikson. It was first broadcast on May 16, 2017 in the United States and was narrated by Robert Redford. The film was the result of ten years of intensive field research and postulated a radically new take on American history, namely that America was democratized through the invention of electrical sound recording and the subsequent auditions the record labels held across North America in the late 1920s, which were open to every ethnic minority and genre of music. The films contained many previously untold stories, a vast amount of previously unseen and extremely rare archival footage and dramatically advanced audio restorations of the 1920s and 1930s recordings. When MacMahon presented his vision for the films and the archival footage to Robert Redford at their first meeting, Redford pronounced it “America’s greatest untold story”. Many critics have cited the American Epic films as being one of the best music documentaries ever made.