From Fall 2020 to Winter 2022, we collaborated with the National Endowment for the Arts to create a series of films to honor their National Heritage Fellows, the highest honor given to folk artists by the U.S. government. It was quite a lift — 28 short docs in 28 months — but an incredibly rewarding project. Each year's group of films were also stitched together into a longer program called Roots of American Culture presented by a host: NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson in 2022, American actor Jimmy Smits in 2021, and storyteller Queen Nur in 2020.