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“Mutzmag” will be the 10th film in local producers Tom and Mimi Davenport’s award winning American folktale series “From the Brothers Grimm,” which includes such classic family films as “Jack and the Dentist’s Daughter,” “Soldier Jack,” and “Ashpet.”
Films in the series have won the American Library Association’s “academy award” for children’s film as well as first prize awards at the Chicago, San Francisco, and Houston film festivals.
“Mutzmag” is set deep in the Appalachian mountains around 1916. The heroine is a plucky young girl named Mutzmag. In a series of hair-raising and comical adventures, Mutzmag saves her gullible half sisters from two bizarre backwoods cannibals.
Mutzmag’s mother dies early in the story, and her two teen-aged sisters decide to leave thier tumble down shack and “seek their fortunes” elsewhere. Mutzmag tags along, acting as a servant girl to her abusive siblings. The girls lose their way in the forest and end up at the cabin of a wicked witch and her brutal but simple-minded giant husband. Quick witted Mutzmag saves the day with nothing but a pocket knife and a ball of string.
The folktale was collected in Richard Chase’s well-known book “Grandfather Tales” and is related to the American trickster “Jack Tale” type, but with a heroine instead of a hero. Mythologist Joseph Campbell called folktales “the primer of the picture language of the soul. ”
Director Tom Davenport found most of his cast in Madison County, N.C., a rural and isolated mountainous area north of Ashville, famous for its tradition of Appalachian ballad singing.
Sheila Barnhill, who plays Mutzmag’s mother, is the best known native Appalachian ballad singer in America. Sheila also performs the bar\jo music that accompanies the film. She is a teacher in Madison County and introduced Mr. Davenport to Robbie Sams, who plays Mutzmag in the film. Robbie took on this difficult and physically taxing role even though she has cystic fibrosis. . Location filming was done in North Caro
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