New trailer for Appalshop documentary "Morristown"

"We don't make anything in this country anymore. If they closed the ports, we'd be naked and barefoot."
- Shirley Reinhardt, former GE worker, Morristown, Tn

Morristown a working class response to globalization.

In this hour-long documentary, director Ann Lewis chronicles nearly a decade of change in Morristown, Tennessee, through interviews with displaced or low-wage Southern workers, Mexican immigrants, and workers and families impacted by globalization.

The film shows how working-class people in Mexico and eastern Tennessee are caught in the throes of massive economic change, challenging their assumptions about work, family, nation and community.

"Morristown" is in Spanish and English with subtitles.
You can pre-order a copy of the DVD by clicking here.

Or call Appalshop Marketing and Sales at 1-800-545-7467 for more information.

Fossil Fools at Appalshop

Performance artist Kristen Baumlier visits Appalshop with the fossil fools art collective. This video is a short excerpt of her performance the petroleum pop princess, which will be featured as part of the unlimited energy show at Appalshop Saturday, July 17.

***UPCOMING SHOW: Fossil Fools March Residency in Kentucky***

March 12 to 17, 2007
Cumberland and Whitesburg Kentucky

2 to 3 days of workshops and one day of performance in Cumberland and Whitesburg, Kentucky

Saturday March 17

Day long event at Appalshop's Boone Motor Building

Noon to 4 pm:
- Kentucky River Watershed Watch Phase 1 water sampling training
- Partner groups set up booths displaying information about water quality issues
- Musicians and storytellers present water themed songs and stories

4 to 6pm:
Two simultaneous events
- Field trip to "reference stream" with high quality and Acid Mine Drainage site
- Presentation of "Conversations with Coal Miners and with Death" in the Appalshop theater

8 to 11pm:
- Live music and performance
- Three bands perform 40 minute sets (or something like that)
- In between sets, an MC introduces groups working to improve water quality in the North Fork of the Kentucky River

The Fossil Fools residency is sponsored by the National Performance Network and Appalshop

Rural War Dead

U.S. soldiers from rural communities are dying at a higher rate in Iraq and Afghanistan than soldiers from larger metropolitan areas. With more rural men and women seeking military job opportunities, their small communities are in turn suffering higher rates of loss.

http://carseyinstitute.unh.edu/documents/RuralDead_11-8final.pdf

This short video report by the Center for Rural Strategies is based on the Carsey Institute's report. The video provides first hand testimony from combat veteran Blake Ortner of Moorhead, MN, a former Army Ranger who currently serves as Lieutenant Colonel in the Virginia National Guard and as Associate Legislative Director for the Paralyzed Veterans of America and features expert analysis from statistician William OÂ’Hare who participated in the study

http://www.ruralstrategies.org/default.html

Black Mountain Part 1

Black Mountain was produced by Appalshop's Community Media Initiative in 1998 in response to a group of Harlan Co. Kentucky residents who were organizing against a mountaintop removal permit for the tallest mountain in the state. The video was screened across the state in homes, churches, and college campuses. Produced by Greg Howard, Tom Hansell, and Nick Szuberla.

For more information about Appalshop visit www.appalshop.org

Rural Youth Speak Back

Reaching for Higher Ground, produced by youth, tells the story of a group of young people who are fighting to save their communities water.

Background:
Appalshop's Appalachian Media Institute had been training young people from Lotts Creek in video production for several years. The goals of these trainings was to have the video makers create works which would serve their community. At the same time a citizens' group named Kentuckians for the Commonwealth had been working on an organizing project against mine blasting and a deep-mine permit which would destroy the community's watershed. Through communication and working together the two groups, young and old, were able to come together and begin sharing ideas and resources.

In October of 1999, working with media artist Nick Szuberla, a new group of students participated in a series of AMI workshops designed to teach them basic camera skills, team work, image framing and in-camera editing. The students spent time outside hunting for images and running relay-races with cameras around their school grounds.

During the months of November and December, the participants began to form their topics and do community interviews.The young video makers picked two topics. One group began to document the history and founder of their community school--Alice Slone. The other group began to record local residents' struggle with the effects that blasting from coal mining is having on water quality and community health. They called people to be interviewed, set a time to stop by, and prepared questions on the topic.

Between January and April the students shot interviews, created selects tapes and began to rough cut their tapes together. During one interview with a community member who was having problems with blasting, the students came across inspectors for the State Department of Surface mining who told the young video makers that they need to turn their camera off. The students later wrote the State Office of Surface Mining and requested an interview with the inspectors. The interview took place after a series of letters and communications from the state's lawyers...

During February the students produced a community showing of their work and had many of the people they interviewed come for the screening. The showing turned into a community meeting on the history of the school and issues faced by people in regards to coal mining. Both young and old people agreed that it was important for the community to fight against the permit which would threaten their watershed. Later in the month the students produced a one hour radio call in show on WMMT, where they played segments of their interviews over the air.

In June the young people, working with KFTC, organized a surprise trip to the Frankfort, KY Office of Surface Mining to confront officials about the permit that would destroy the Kelly Fork watershed.

In all, over thirty students, community members and ten community-based artists boarded a bus and traveled to Frankfort. Armed with creative tactics and video cameras the young people held a two hour meeting/protest with government officials where they demanded the pulling of the proposed permit. The young people left the building chanting "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, you sink us, and we will sink you." A student later reflected that she felt this was one moment where "we were all together as one...just for one day."

In the following months youth participants in Appalshop's AMI project produced a documentary on youth activism. Building upon the work that came before them, they interviewed the participants in the organizing project and used their peers' video footage to create a piece which spoke to the power of youth organizing.

Learn more about AMI

Rural Health

Rural America

Keep it Rural and keep it real.