Movies: Appalachia

After a personal tragedy, Sarah joins her friends on a caving expedition in the Appalachian Mountains. But when a rockfall traps them deep underground, their adventure turns into a nightmare. As they search for a way out, the group discovers they are...

In 1931, the Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Virginia, run a multipurpose backwoods establishment that hides their true business — bootlegging. Middle brother Forrest is the brain of the operation; older Howard is the brawn, and younger Jack, ...

A father survives a plane crash in rural Appalachia, but becomes suspicious of the elderly couple who take him in to nurse him back to health with the ancient remedies....

A Pentecostal pastor, Lemuel Childs, and his believers handle venomous snakes to prove themselves before God. Lemuel’s daughter, Mara holds a secret that threatens to tear the church apart: her romantic past with a nonbeliever, Augie. As Mara’s weddi...

A troubled woman seeks out the child she gave up for adoption; a gay motel owner takes in a handsome drifter; and the wife of a preacher frets that a gay couple has moved in across the street. All of their lives will intersect as Loggerheads subtly d...

After spending two decades in England, Bill Bryson returns to the U.S., where he decides the best way to connect with his homeland is to hike the Appalachian Trail with one of his oldest friends....

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 toge...

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....

In a rural Appalachian community haunted by the legacy of a Civil War massacre, a rebellious young man struggles to escape the violence that would bind him to the past....

Deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, where every man owns a gun and a moonshine still, abides living legend Jesco White, "the dancing outlaw". As a boy Jesco was in and out of reform school and the insane asylum. To keep h...

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...

A roaming hillbilly, on a quest to defy the Devil, encounters several supernatural characters and does battle with his silver-stringed guitar....

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...

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 thei...

A documentary that examines the cultural stereotype of the people of Appalachia and how that has affected America's relationship with its rural communities....

Meadow Bridge is a coming-of-age story that follows Darcy, a fourteen-year-old girl growing up in a small West Virginia town in the late 1990s. It's a story about growing up on the edge of poverty and possibility - about trying to reach out into the ...

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, sing...

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, a...

In seeking her own redemption from the one man of whom she is most afraid, 10-year-old Cadi Forbes discovers a secret sin haunting her community of Welsh immigrants in 1850s Appalachia....

Set in West Virginia during the 2014 Elk River chemical spill, a first-generation college student clashes with her family while investigating a bizarre issue with their water supply....