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)
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)
2020-01-30
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Prestonburg, KY is a small blue-collar town with hunting, fishing, coal mining, and two of the biggest names in online horror talk radio: Wes Vance and Aaron Frye (aka "The Creepy Kentuckian" and "Uncle Bill") The two self-proclaimed "redneck geeks" bonded at a young age while their weekends devouring horror films. They now use their extensive horror knowledge to record a weekly podcast on DEADPIT.com and have found a worldwide audience through their candid conversation, quick wit, and lots of swearing. What started as an outlet to express their love for horror films has evolved into an online industry with millions of followers and the ability to talk to their childhood heroes. But what happens when your childhood pursuits start to collide with your adult aspirations? Can Deadpit survive it's own success?
The largest leisure and shopping complex in Europe, the Metro Centre in Tynemouth, and its creator John Hall.
Examines the life and career of John Calipari, one of the most polarizing figures in modern college basketball, weaving his story around that of his 2015–16 Kentucky team.
On March 25, 1911, a catastrophic fire broke out at the Triangle Waist Company in New York City. Trapped inside the upper floors of a ten-story building, 146 workers - mostly young immigrant women and teenage girls - were burned alive or forced to jump to their deaths to escape an inferno that consumed the factory in just 18 minutes. It was the worst disaster at a workplace in New York State until 9/11. The tragedy changed the course of history, paving the way for government to represent working people, not just business, for the first time, and helped an emerging American middle class to live the American Dream.
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. Narrated by Alan Lomax. The Association for Cultural Equity’s Alan Lomax Archive channel on YouTube additionally streams outtakes from this film: other strong performances by Sheila Kay Adams, Dellie Norton, and Cas Wallin, Lawrence Eller, the Hickses, Algia Mae Hinton and John Dee Holeman, Tommy Jarrell, John “Doodle” Thrower, and Nimrod Workman.
Millions of American Evangelicals are praying for the State of Israel. This film traces this unusual relationship, from rural Kentucky to the halls of government in Washington, through the moving of the American Embassy in Jerusalem and to the annexation plan of the West Bank.
Republic of Finland is promoting clean technology by organizing Green Mining seminars where foreign experts tell us how the development of the world is becoming increasingly expensive by 2050. The Earth is running out of resources and mining companies have to use increasingly low-grade metal deposits. Finland aims to be a model country for environmentally friendly mining. Its pioneer project is Talvivaara, which uses new biotechnology to extract nickel, zinc and uranium. Through several charismatic characters, the documentary film The Land Of Mine follows the rise of the biggest nickel mine in Western Europe and the ensuing disasters whose effects continue to reverberate in the nation.
Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.
Delving into the existence of Bigfoot, also known as Sasquatch, considered one of the most mysterious creatures on Earth.
In 1967 Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor came with a crew to eastern Kentucky to make a film showing people from all walks of life in the United States. They finished the day by filming coal miners and their families in rental houses. As the filmmakers were leaving, Hobart Ison, the owner of the property, drove up and fired three shots, killing Hugh O'Connor. Elizabeth Barrett, from Kentucky herself, explores why this happened by trying to understand the people and culture of eastern Kentucky.
Andrew Thornton’s drug operation was one of the largest Kentucky and Tennessee had ever seen. Thornton would perish while attempting to parachute carrying African gold coins, weapons, thousands in cash and 75 pounds of cocaine. From the CIA to secret parties, Thornton is described as the James Bond of Kentucky by those who knew him. The documentary uncovers the true story behind the drug-sniffing bear and its rise to stardom. The film dissects the myths surrounding the ultimate party animal. Did Country Music legend Waylon Jennings buy the taxidermied bear? How much cocaine did it eat? And is the actual drug-eating bear now on display in a Kentucky store?
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.
OUT OF DARKNESS: THE MINE WORKERS' STORY is a documentary by Academy Award-winning director Barbara Kopple (HARLAN COUNTY, USA). Historical film footage and photographs are integrated with first-hand accounts of UMWA history and of the Pittston strike of 1989-90.
Williamstown, Kentucky, is home to the Ark Encounter – a “life-size” creationist museum filled with all of the creatures that traveled in Noah's Ark, including dinosaurs. With incredible access to the park leading up to its opening, the filmmakers expose the larger system behind the creationist movement, piecing together the many factors that have led to the museum presenting its information as historical fact, and the people who are fighting to set the scientific record straight. Amid a climate of science denial and a well-funded corporate behemoth, three Kentuckians (a local geologist, an ex-creationist, and an atheist activist) try their best to challenge the movement that is taking over their home state. Meanwhile, fervent believers work diligently to create the lifelike animatronics that will be on display in the Ark.
Dancing in Dulias was made by members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) and Lesbians Against Pit Closures during and immediate after the 1984/85 minders strike. Like the forthcoming movie, Pride, it documents the interactions between lesbians and gay men and the miners and their families in Dulais in South Wales - only this time it's the real thing. As well as some memorable footage that includes the Blaenant Lodge banner leading the 1985 Lesbian and Gay Pride march and LGSM members struggling with bingo at the local community hall, the film documents the wider political impact of this seemingly unlikely alliance. (cont. http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2014/dancing-in-dulais#sthash.HScQCj7E.dpuf)
"Calipari & The Chicken Man" is an original documentary that tells the story of a billionaire college booster and a hall of fame coach, who's friendship led to one of the most shocking moves in the history of college athletics.
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.
Black dust, shrill metallic noises, dark tunnels, muscular bodies – all that is the past. At the end of 2018, extraction of coal throughout Germany came to an end. That same year, the voices of the emerging climate protest movement Fridays for Future grew louder. Against the backdrop of these media and socio-political events, the film follows five miners on their tragic, humorous and heartwarming search for a new role in life.
One of the most important Kentuckians of the 20th century, Harry Caudill brought the story of Appalachia to national attention when his book “Night Comes to the Cumberlands” was released in 1963. The nonfiction account of Eastern Kentucky’s coal region, part history and part polemic, eloquently recounted the exploitation of Appalachia’s land and its people by business and government interests, and made Caudill a national spokesperson for his homeland. Harry Caudill spent his life advocating for Eastern Kentucky, with the aim of helping the powerless as well as securing the region’s unmatched natural resources for future generations. His work led to lasting government reforms for Appalachia, and his legacy remains a touchstone for activists today.
Emma Freese is desperate when her husband Alfred falls ill at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel. How is the family supposed to get by without their wages? The war has scarred this generation, but now things are supposed to be looking up. The workers want their fair share and are fighting for an income that also gives them room to live. In October 1956, 34,000 metalworkers in the shipyards and factories of Schleswig-Holstein walk off the job to fight for justice and their dignity. This strike is still regarded as the toughest and longest in Germany. Employers and politicians stand in the strikers' way.