March 19-21
For just over thirty years, Appalshop, located in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields, has been championing the richness of regional culture. Through its diversity of approaches, seen in films, radio programs, live theater, and music performances, this unusual arts organization has helped to capture folk practices and clarify local histories in an act of respectful preservation. Often responding as an engaged advocate for cultural integrity, Appalshop has come to be a contributor to a thriving regional life rather than simply a steward of authenticity.
Appalshop's Voices from Home tour brings the crew from their home base in Whitesburg, Kentucky, to the Bay Area for a week of collaborations. A weekend seminar at San Francisco State University will concentrate on Appalshop's unique documentary techniques with two veteran filmmakers, Herb E. Smith and Elizabeth Barret, present. The Richmond Center for the Performing Arts stages several storytelling and theatrical extravaganzas with participants from Richmond and Whitesburg sharing the boards. At PFA we offer a three-day glimpse of Appalshop's passionate body of work. We'll show everything from the very first film, Woodrow Cornett: Letcher County Butcher, made in 1971, to some of the most recent, including the premiere of Hazel Dickens: It's Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song. With spare and elegant style, these Appalshop works serve the needs of a region through their critical documentation of (sometimes endangered) local culture, simultaneously sharing their distinct and valued voices with an audience far from home.
-Steve Seid, Video Curator
