Ken Hechler with Mimi Pickering at the January 2006 showing of her two films about The Buffalo Creek Disaster

Mimi Pickering is one of the oldest working members of Appalshop, Appalachia’s official media center, located in Whitesburg, Ky.  During the last three decades she has made many films including several about West Virginia, most notably two films about the Buffalo Creek Disaster- “The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man”(1975) and “Buffalo Creek Revisited”(1985). She also made a great biography of Bluefield native Hazel Dickens called “Hazel Dickens – It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song” and the very important “Chemical Valley” (1991) about the connection between the Bhopal Disaster and the Kanawha Valley sister MIC plant at Institute. All four of these films are now available on DVD from Appalshop. In an essay about films about coal mining, I chose her Buffalo Creek films as the most important of all of the hundreds of films I have seen about coal mining that I have seen since I came to WV in 1978. (more…)

Dr. Fred Pollock and his wife Carol finally made it to Sundance this year. He’s having a great year, traveling to Israel to lecture on emergency orthopedic surgery, hosting the 10th year of the WV Jewish Film Festival, and directing ER orthopedic surgery at CAMC – which won a national award for its care of people getting hip and knee replacements. Below are some of the picts he took at Sundance plus the “Smile” he got from the Charleston Gazette…..

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Catherine Pancake, WV-raised artist now living in Baltimore

Black Diamonds will finally be shown in New York City – at the Museum of Modern Art’s prestigious “Documentary Fortnight” series  on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 6 PM. 

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Rudy Panucci, one of WV’s most creative multi-media artists/promoters, finally got to present a program at The South Charleston Film Series on Saturday night, Dec. 8th. From 7 PM-9:30 PM he screened clips of his program hosted on The Gazz, “Radio Free Charleston,” and after a short break, some live bands took to the stage.

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Dale Payne, a native of the now almost gone town of Eskdale, released his book on his hometown.  He will be publishing only 250 copies, 182 pages, with lots of pictures. (See above and below) Eskdale was an “independent town” during the Cabin Creek-Paint Creek Mine Wars which means that it was not controlled by one of the coal companies. It was the home of the Blizzard clan and many other activists during the Mine Wars. Unfortunately, almost all of it has been demolished now. To contact Dale Payne to purchase one of the rare copies, send him an e-mail at – dalmarpayne@hotmail.com.

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Laura Harrisonsomehow found herself in West Virginia in 1996, directing her first documentary about Thurmond, the town used as a location for John Sayles 1987 epic, “Matewan.” At the time various interesting people including Katy Miller, a former WVLC department head, and the son of Hodding Carter were living in the tiny town. Every so often someone contacts me about acquiring the film and so….with a little Google searching I found out what Ms. Harrison has been doing since 1996….

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Adam Harris from WV Music Hall of Fame

The South Charleston Museum and the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame presented two films about West Virginia musicians on  Saturday, October 13th, 2007, @ 7PM.  The two films were “George Crumb: Voice of the Whale”(1976, 54 mins.) and “The Amazing Dolores”(1989, 29 mins.). Adam Harris from the WVMHF set up a display of items to be presented at the future Hall of Fame in the lobby and introduced the program. Jacob Young, the director of “The Amazing Delores,” was unable to travel to South Charleston because of a late Thursday work emergency that came up at WVU Television Services. Unfortunately, only 10 people attended the very interesting night of films.

On November 16^th at the WV Cultural Center the first inductees including Mr. Crumb will be honored. (more…)

Ethan Uslan  played on Garrison Keillor’s PBS radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion.” You can listen to it latter here -http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/

He is the son of Niza Uslan, the Young People’s Department Head at Cabell County Public Library. (Thanks to Ralph Oppenheim from Cabell County Public Library for letting me know.)   He himself worked in the library at Marshall University. I recently wrote about Mr. Uslan because he performed at the Charlotte Public Libray during a showing of “Tol’able David,” a silent film linked to WV. (more…)

Enoch Hicks now lives in Dayton, Ohio but has always kept his WV roots in War, Mc Dowell County. He recently   presented the first public showing of his new 120 minute film, “A Flaming Rock!Coal.” On October 7th, from 11 am-4 pm, he will appear at Tamarack in Beckley to autograph copies of his new book and DVDs. (more…)