The Other Madisons is a remarkable contribution to American history documenting the process by which an oral tradition preserves, with exquisite fidelity, an important social record, in spite of, or perhaps in response to, suppression or neglect by discrimination and racism. In this documentary film, Dr. Bettye Kearse documents her personal experience with research and cultural institutions and her visits to sites in Ghana, Portugal, Virginia, and Texas that figure prominently in her family history. In so doing, she demonstrates how family history becomes public history. What is lost, perhaps, in this pivot from private to public telling, from oral telling to written text, is the griotte's voice, her facial expression, her body language, and all the nonverbal signals that give life to each ancestor and communicate the authority, wisdom, and love implicit in the griotte role. Pay: $200/half day, $300/full day.