A Ribbon In The Sky

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.

RUNNING FOR THE MOUNTAINS digs into West Virginia's history of 'patriotic sacrifice,' unearthing veins of dark money and dirty politics. The film tracks grassroots candidates and ordinary citizens' attempts to save their land, water, homes, and communities - calling out the pro-extraction politicians enabling destruction, including Senator Joe Manchin and his likely replacement, coal baron Governor Jim Justice. Appalachia is the proverbial canary in a coal mine; pay attention or pay the price.

In the grip of the Great Depression, unemployed men and women joined an unlikely WPA program to document America in guidebooks and interviews. With the Federal Writers' Project, the government pitted young, untested talents against the problems of everyday Americans. From that experience, some of America's great writers found their own voices, and discovered the Soul of a People. — Spark Media

Examines the intergenerational impact of addiction by chronicling the love, labor, loss, and uncertainty of one woman’s struggle to live a life of sobriety. Weaving together moments of glee, fulfillment, acceptance, sorrow, and disappointment, this documentary takes an intimate look at the bonds that hold one family together and a disease that threatens to tear them apart.

For twelve years he stood as America's 32nd President, a man who overcame the ravages of polio to pull America through the Great Depression and WWII. From his legendary Fireside Chats to his sweeping New Deal, Franklin Delano Roosevelt revolutionized the American way of life. FDR: A Presidency Revealed examines one of history's most compelling figures. Inspired by his cousin Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt rose to the nation's highest office during the depths of one of its darkest periods. A man of few words, he brought a nation together through his revolutionary Fireside Chats. He introduced vast reforms like Social Security and work relief for the unemployed. At the same time, his administration hid a dark underbelly teeming with covert maneuvers, spy rings, and powerful enemies.

Every American who has listened to the radio knows Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land." The music of the folk singer/songwriter has been recorded by everyone from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to U2. Originally blowing out of the Dust Bowl in Depression-era America, he blended vernacular, rural music and populism to give voice to millions of downtrodden citizens. Guthrie's music was politically leftist, uniquely patriotic and always inspirational.

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.

Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. The filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. Forced to travel more by economic necessity than the spirit of adventure, the film's subjects dispel romantic myths of a hobo existence and its corresponding veneer of freedom. Riding the Rails recounts the hoboes' trade secrets for survival and accounts of dank miseries, loneliness, imprisonment, death, and dispossession. Sixty years later, the filmmakers transport their subjects back to the tracks, where the surging impact of sound and movement resuscitates memories of a shattered adolescence and devastating rite of passage.

A documentary that traces the origins of the political power structure that rules our nation and the world today. The modern political power structure has its roots in the hidden manipulation and accumulation of gold and other forms of money.

Exploring the devastation of the 1930s, Lisa Jackson shapes amateur-shot archival film from a South Dakota town and audio interviews of residents who lived through the Great Depression to craft a moving and powerful allegory of contemporary financial corruption.

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.

Revisit photographs created by Kentucky school children in the 1970s and the place where their photos were made. Photographer and artist Wendy Ewald, who guided the students in making their visionary photographs, returns to Kentucky and learns how the lives and visions of her former students have changed.