I'm David Hoffman filmmaker, and this film was made for the United States Information Agency.

They used to give grants to filmmakers, mostly young filmmakers like me to kind of make pictures of America, which the government would then send around the world.

Give a sense of America.

This is running the time of John Kennedy when we were kind of sending out the message in the world that we were the great White Hope.

And we were, um So I'm driving around New England, my home, and they come upon this small New Hampshire town and it says Contra dance tonight.

So I show up, set up my lights, introduced myself to the people, very friendly, a combination of old time New Hampshire folks and hippies.

And the dance begins.

And it's an incredible first of all dance and second of all music.

Unbelievable music I had never heard before by a terrific pan.

So take a look and I'll tell you what happened after I made the movie.

When you've seen it stop around, right?

No.

Yeah.

Wait, Theo So the movie you just saw I made and it ran around the world and it was unbelievably popular.

People love that kind of dancing.

It's kind of old time country dancing, a little bit of folk dancing, the people having a good time and my style.

My star was handheld.

Why was it hand held?

Because, first of all, I hated the tripod.

And second of all, I love the way these people moved.

So I started to dance with them.

And then when they got back in the editing room, I made the little movie.

You just saw one interesting thing.

Dudley Laufman L A u F A man.

He's the guy was calling and he became like a national heritage.

He's extraordinarily famous.

I think he's still alive on unbelievable kind of American folk artist.

Hope you enjoy this.

If you'd like to subscribe to my channel, please do.

And you can see more films like this on my channel by searching the word dance.