Mountain dialect, culture and identity are revealed by the true experts on Southern Appalachian culture--the people whose families have lived there for generations.
The cultural roots of coal continue to permeate the rituals of daily life in Appalachia even as its economic power wanes. The journey of a coal miner’s daughter exploring the region’s dreams and myths, untangling the pain and beauty, as her community sits on the brink of massive change.
King Coal
2023
7
Documentary profiling an Appalachian farming family struggling to scrape out a living. Linking education and economic development, The Children Must Learn suggests that better schooling, especially in agricultural techniques, would bring improvement.
The Children Must Learn
1940
0
Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this documentary takes an intimate look at the bonds that hold one family together and a disease that threatens to tear them apart.
Picture Proof
2023
0
RUNNING FOR THE MOUNTAINS digs into West Virginia's history of 'patriotic sacrifice,' unearthing veins of dark money and dirty politics. The film tracks grassroots candidates and ordinary citizens' attempts to save their land, water, homes, and communities - calling out the pro-extraction politicians enabling destruction, including Senator Joe Manchin and his likely replacement, coal baron Governor Jim Justice. Appalachia is the proverbial canary in a coal mine; pay attention or pay the price.
Running for the Mountains
2024
6
This documentary follows the lives of the Bowling family as they fight to survive in dirt-poor Appalachia. Matriarch Iree has given birth to 13 children, but only two have left to seek better lives in Ohio while the rest have married and started their own impoverished families near home. Uneducated and unskilled, all are unemployed, and domestic violence and alcoholism pose serious problems. The filmmakers explore the family's relationships through interviews and footage of their daily lives.
American Hollow
1999
5
During World War I, African-Americans worked on the railroad near Corbin, Kentucky. When whites returned from the war, there was conflict. Whites sought their former jobs and positions in the community. In 1919, a race riot occurred. Whites put the African-Americans on railroad cars and ran them out of town. In Trouble Behind, members of the Corbin community speak out on the issue. The filmmakers also interview former members of the Corbin, which at the time of filming had only one black family. Some Corbin residents express confusion as to why African-Americans don't move back. Others openly use racial epithets. Some young adults seem troubled by the racism, past and present. Others don't.
Trouble Behind
1991
0
A documentary that examines the cultural stereotype of the people of Appalachia and how that has affected America's relationship with its rural communities.
Hillbilly
2018
7
An intimate, arresting portrait of the cursed Appalachian mining town of Ivanhoe, Virginia. The film captures the town as it prepares for the annual Jubilee, a wild 4th of July celebration where families and neighbors let loose and triumph over daily hardships, industrial abandonment, and race.
The Curse and the Jubilee
2018
0
Follows the 300 year history of the Appalachian people with interviews by scholars, musicians and writers.
The Appalachians
2005
8
Chronicles the 50-year career of singer/songwriter Jean Ritchie, from Viper, Kentucky to the New York stage. Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, and her family and friends in Eastern Kentucky are among those interviewed. A 1996 KET production.
Mountain Born: The Jean Ritchie Story
1996
0
Revisit photographs created by Kentucky school children in the 1970s and the place where their photos were made. Photographer and artist Wendy Ewald, who guided the students in making their visionary photographs, returns to Kentucky and learns how the lives and visions of her former students have changed.
Portraits and Dreams
2020
6
John Cohen, founding member of the ‘50s folk troupe the New Lost City Ramblers, started making films in order to bring together the two disciplines he was heavily active in: music and photography. The End of an Old Song brings us to North Carolina, and demonstrates the power of old English ballads sung with gusto while soused in a saloon.
The End of an Old Song
1969
10
In July of 2019 the Blackjewel coal company announced it was declaring bankruptcy. Miners were told to stop working mid shift, and their last paychecks bounced. The miners retaliated by blocking a train full of coal, camping out on the coal tracks for weeks. Queer regional organizers made their way to the encampment to support the miners. The encampment became a place for community gathering and mutual aid distribution. Sarah Moyer, a film maker living in Kentucky, also made their way to the encampment and filmed this short documentary on the blockade. (Summary from Queer Appalachia)
Scenes from the Blackjewel Miners Blockade
2020
0
Bob Childress was the founder and builder of the famous "Rock Churches" of southwest Virginia, all established between 1919 and 1954. In 2022, Buford Jessup and his family set out to visit all seven of his great uncle's churches.
My Great Great Great Uncle Built Churches
2022
0
You Gave Me A Song offers an intimate portrait of old-time music pioneer Alice Gerrard and her remarkable, unpredictable journey creating and preserving traditional music. The film follows eighty-four year old Gerrard over several years, weaving together verité footage of living room rehearsals, recording sessions, songwriting, archival work, and performances with photos and rare field recordings. Much of the film is told in Alice’s voice and via interviews with musical collaborators and family members who share the story of Alice and others chasing that high lonesome sound.
You Gave Me A Song: The Life and Music of Alice Gerrard
2019
10
Set in the North Carolina Appalachians, Sprout Wings and Fly honors the fiddle playing of 82-year-old Tommy Jarrell of Toast, NC. Tommy was quirky, gregarious and generous, and this film shows him at his best, in fine fiddling form.
Sprout Wings and Fly
1983
5
Appalachian Journey is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). It offers songs, dances, stories, and religious rituals of the Southern Appalachians. Preachers, singers, fiddlers, banjo pickers, moonshiners, cloggers, and square dancers recount the good times and the hard times of rural life there. Performers include Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray and Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Workman and Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, and others, with a bonus of a few African-Americans from the North Carolina Piedmont.
Appalachian Journey
1991
9
In 1915 a young, charismatic Japanese man with a mysterious past entered into the Appalachian culture of Asheville, North Carolina, is suspicioned a spy, targeted by the Klan, but perseveres with a passion for photography and the mountains he adopts, bringing to life Great Smoky Mountains National Park & the Appalachian Trail.
A Life Reimagined: The George Masa Story
0
Whiskey-making, one of the oldest traditions in the mountains, has been illegal since the end of the 18th century. Tradition is a portrait of Appalachian moonshiner Logan Adams, who began practicing his trade as a boy because “back then there wasn’t any jobs…about like now.” Adams discusses his vocation and why he continues to make whiskey despite having served a string of jail sentences for the practice. Adams’ story and family interviews are intercut with a federal revenue agent who describes the methods used by law enforcement agents to apprehend moonshiners. The film concludes with a tour by Adams of his still as he describes the whiskey-making process. This film will be of interest to anyone interested in moonshining, the economic and traditional forces that motivate illegal whiskey making, the law and its penalties, as well as anyone interested in what a practice long stereotyped by outsiders really entails.
Tradition
1973
0
The Appalachian Investigators of Mysterious Sightings (A.I.M.S.) team comes together to reminisce and celebrate the life of their founder, John "Trapper" Tice, in this Mountain Monsters special.
Mountain Monsters: A Tribute to Trapper
2021
0