About the Film
This 57 minute documentary continues the story of the Landis family of Creedmoor, NC into the 21 Century.
The first film A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle was broadcast on PBS in the late 1980s. That film is one of the only documentaries yet made about the history of an African American family. The new film continues the history of the family roughly 35 years after the release of the first film.
Bertha Landis died in 2000 at the age of 102. In a few short years most of her 11 children died. Two still living during the filming of Reunion were her son, Claude, and youngest daughter, Priscilla Landis Daniel. Both lived a short distance from the home house, with Priscilla and her family on adjacent property. The Landis family was to lose Claude in 2019 and Priscilla in 2021. One of Bertha's children, Fleming Landis, had left North Carolina in 1947 for work in the tire factories in Akron, Ohio. Fleming, a great singer, died in 2007 but appears in Reunion in footage from the earlier film. His daughters Karen and Sharon continue the family’s song tradition in a female gospel group called the Echoes of Heaven. They appear in footage shot for the Reunion film. His son Iverson “Junnie” Landis, Jr., and Dennis and Kenneth Daniel worked to bring about the making of a second film and with Tom Davenport are co-producers of Reunion.
The original farm of Bertha and Coy Landis has been subdivided into parcels owned by various grandchildren. Claude Landis' daughter Lisa Landis Hunt and her husband first owned the home house, which they repaired, and later sold to Priscilla’s son Dennis Daniel. It remains a reminder of Bertha's continued influence on the family. Dennis and his brother Kenneth Daniel, as they neared retirement from careers in the business world, decided to return the Landis land to farming. They enrolled in 2018 in the N.C. State Extension Farm School to study advanced growing techniques like hydroponics and aeroponics, and won a grant from NC AgVentures to implement what they learned. Afterwards they established The Singing Stream Farm and website. It announces, “We're a family-owned farm located in southern Granville County North Carolina. Our goal is to bring back healthy eating by providing fresh produce to our customers straight from the field to table.
