This series of films will be presented by Mimi Pickering, an award-winning filmmaker with Appalshop, a media, arts, and education center founded in Kentucky’s Appalachian coalfields.

Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man
Directed by Mimi Pickering (1975)
40 min.

A look at the Buffalo Creek disaster, which occurred when a coal-waste dam collapsed. The film includes interviews with survivors, mining officials, and union representatives, along with footage of the flood itself.

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Chemical Valley
Directed by Anne Lewis, Mimi Pickering (1991)
57 min.

A West Virginia community is deeply divided over potential life and death questions. A local chemical plant produces the same deadly toxins that caused the disaster in Bhopal, India, and a series of accidents has residents alarmed as the area’s fragile economy is dependent on the jobs provided by the plant. The efforts to come to grips with this conflict form the core of this timely film.

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Evelyn Williams
Directed by Anne Lewis (1995)
28 min.

Evelyn Williams is a portrait of a woman who is many things: a coal miner’s daughter and wife; a domestic worker and mother of nine; a college student in her 50s; a community organizer; an Appalachian African American. Above all, she is a woman whose awareness of class and race oppression has led her to a lifetime of activism. Now in her 80s, she is battling to save her land in Eastern Kentucky from destruction by a large oil and gas firm.

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