Speaking for Themselves

Whitesburg, Ky. — Past Carolyn’s Diner and Pigman Cleaners, just the other side of King Motor Body, sits Appalshop.

Tucked away amid the mountains of eastern Kentucky, this unlikely-looking three-story building with diagonal wooden slats houses a film studio, video production unit, FM radio station, record label, and theater company. Their purpose: to record and present the history, struggles, art, and culture of Appalachia and its people.

Founded in 1969, Appalshop recently attracted national attention by sending its cameras a few hundred miles up the Appalachian Mountains to Institute, West Virginia. The result was Chemical Valley, an award-winning documentary set to air nationwide on the PBS series “P.O.V.” on July 9.

Institute, a predominantly black community just outside Charleston, is home to the nation’s only Union Carbide plant that produces MIC — the same toxin that killed 3,500 people and injured 50,000 in Bhopal, India in 1984. Chemical Valley focuses on the conflict between plant officials, workers, and local residents following the disaster.

Appalshop producers Mimi Pickering and Anne Johnson made Chemical Valley on a $150,000 budget compiled of foundation grants. Pickering, who has worked at Appalshop for 20 years, says the project began when Institute residents expressed concern about the lack of safety precautions after the Bhopal accident.

The filmmakers took their cameras into every comer of the community, talking to plant officials, workers, scientists, and those who live in the shadow of the pesticide plant. As residents fought for tougher safety guidelines at the plant, Pickering says, they began to sense the connections between India and Appalachia.

“This region is like the Third World in terms of the corporations and the way they treat their workers and the community,” she says. The West Virginia plant is 10 times the size of its Indian counterpart. Three months after Union Carbide began operating the factory, a gas leak sent 135 people to the hospital.

The accident also caused friction in the community. In an attempt to garner worker and community support for the corporation in the wake of Bhopal, the company held what Pickering calls a “Union Carbide pep rally.”

Not everyone was cheering. A group of residents protested, arguing that company practices were hazardous to local residents and to the environment. But with job opportunities scarce in the area, many families who depend on company pay did not look kindly on neighbors biting the hand that was feeding them.

“There was a real polarization between workers and community residents due in large part to the terrible economic situation in West Virginia and a lot of Appalachia,” Pickering says. “The small community group that spoke out was really threatened and intimidated.”

 

Wisdom and Beauty

Chemical Valley captures the competing tensions in the community, Pickering says, by focusing on the “issue of jobs versus environmental safety. Are those two at odds?”

Johnson agrees, saying she and Pickering wanted to present a balanced view. “You get all sides — you get the company, you get the workers. And they’re not in little sound bites — they’re at length and in context.” Johnson believes the film is “consistent with good documentary, which tries to make people think about things and not hit them over the head with a sledgehammer.”

The approach worked. Chemical Valley has collected awards at the Aveda U.S. Environmental Film Festival, as well as festivals in Louisville, San Francisco, and West Virginia.

Perhaps more important to the producers, however, the film has been well received in Institute. Community people “seemed really pleased with it,” Pickering says. “It meant something that somebody had cared to tell their story. That was very satisfying.”

Dee Davis, executive producer at Appalshop, says Chemical Valley represents some of the center’s primary goals. “That piece is important not just because it looks at problems with toxics, but also because it looks at the community and how they deal with it. If you can see and understand and enjoy the vitality of that community, it gives you a better perspective on the problems of a toxic chemical plant in the middle of that community.”

Davis, who has worked at Appalshop “off and on since 1973,” says that the purpose and practice of the center haven’t really changed since its founding in 1969. “We work in a couple more venues than we did then, but it’s pretty much the same work. The idea is to try to get a little better at it.”

A large part of Appalshop’s work, Davis says, has always been to help give Appalachians their own voice in the documenting process. “We’re a cultural arts center, and we’re particularly focused on this central Appalachian region and people. What we do is try to let local people tell their own stories, speak for themselves, list the issues they think are important.

“There’s a long tradition in this part of the world of outside media representing local people,” Davis adds. “Our purpose is a counterpart to that approach. There may be some particular problems in this region, but there’s also a lot of wisdom, a lot of lessons learned and a lot of beauty.”

Nearly all of the 32 full-time employees at Appalshop are either natives to the region or have lived here for years. “It’s important to have a sense of the totality of this place,” Davis says. “Most of us are from here. This is our home. How it’s depicted is important to us.”

While Appalshop’s purpose may have remained the same over the past two decades, the Appalachia it records has not. Davis and others expect dramatic changes in the years to come.

“The coal is running out,” Davis says. “Geological surveys say approximately 20 more years of coal and that’s it. That’s a major problem. What are people going to do to make their living? What are they going to hang on to, what are they going to change? It’s not just an economic consideration. It’s cultural. Mining coal is in many ways integrated into everything that’s going on here.”

 

On the Road

To keep up with the changing region, Appalshop has branched out into a variety of media. A 12-member ensemble known as the Roadside Theater company writes and produces plays about Appalachian life and presents them both locally and across the country.

“The thing that differentiates us the most from other theater companies is that we’re writing original work about the place where we live,” says Carol Thompson, producer for Roadside. “Most of the members of the company have been here in excess of 10 years, and some as long as 15 years.”

With each production, Roadside attempts to document and preserve some aspect of Appalachian culture. “South of the Mountain” uses music and drama to convey a mountain family’s adjustment from farming to coal mining. The simply-titled “Mountain Tales” features dramatic depictions of traditional Appalachian stories and music.

“I think the key thing that all of Appalshop is doing is creating ways of letting people tell their own stories,” says Thompson.

Working for Roadside requires company members to be jacks of more than one trade. Everyone contributes to creating and assembling productions: writing, producing, acting, preparing sets, coordinating tour information, and collaborating with other arts groups while on tour.

Roadside members spend roughly 16 weeks a year on the road. The current touring schedule includes shows from Zuni, New Mexico to Red Wing, Minnesota. “It’s a chance for us to change the idea of Appalachia and of Appalachian people, to correct some of the stereotypes,” says Thompson.

Since the underlying philosophy is to perform and promote “community-based art” — art that originates from and centers around a particular locality — the company tries to spend two weeks at each stop. “The work has a lot more meaning for us and hopefully for the people involved if we can stay longer and be engaged with the community,” Thompson explains.

Despite how far the company travels with a show, Roadside productions debut locally, usually in the 160-seat theater on Appalshop’s first floor. “These are the waters you test,” says Thompson. “If it doesn’t make sense to the people here, then somewhere along the line we’ve messed up.”

 

In Your Ear

Sixteen-year-old Christie Collins grabs a compact disc from the huge music rack behind her, scoots up to the control board, delicately inserts the shining disc, and pokes the CD player to cue up her next song. The studio walls are cluttered with orange-and-black “No Smoking” signs, a bright blue calendar featuring a smiling University of Kentucky basketball coach Rick Pitino, and a bulletin plastered with overlapping pictures of disc jockeys clowning around in the studio.

Collins runs a show called “Street Talk” on WMMT-FM, the Appalshop radio station. Volunteers do almost all of the broadcasting, and they seem to take a certain pride in their gritty, anti-establishment sound. The cover of a recent program guide reads “WMMT 88.7 FM — The Non-Industrial Giant in Appalachia.”

The cover also boasts a picture of two women wearing zany sunglasses. A caption declares: “Radio Like You Have Never Seen!”

The crazy-quilt schedule inside the program guide certainly supports that claim. In addition to talk shows like “Appalachian Perspectives” and a public affairs program called “Crossroads,” the station broadcasts an old-time bluegrass show called “Deep in Tradition,” followed by “The Eclectic Hour” with Whisperin’ Ray and “Manic Monday Meltdown” with Nuke Wellington.

There’s also the “Cudloe Stump Farm and Traffic Report,” “Champagne Charlie’s Psychedelic Flashback,” and the “Biscuits and Gravy” morning show featuring film producer Mimi Pickering as Biscuits, an Appalachian feminist.

Program Director Jim Webb thinks the station’s diversity is one of its chief assets. “Because of the complete variety of programming we have, we hope we provide something for everyone in the region. This is truly community radio.”

High-school-age disc jockeys are fairly rare, and Christie Collins says she enjoys working at the station. “What I really like is that you have the freedom to say whatever you want on the air. It gives teenagers like me a chance to experience radio.”

 

“TV Isn’t Reality”

Darren Day is another teenager who can boast of some unique experience. Since enrolling in a media class at Whitesburg High, Day has worked after school and sometimes late into the night at Appalshop, putting together video packages and mini-documentaries through an educational outreach program that allows students access to the center’s film and video facilities.

Day says once students learn how to use the equipment, the rest is their own responsibility. “We film, we edit, we interview the people. We do it all.”

As at WMMT, the film and video crew at Appalshop allows students the freedom to work at their own pace, with few restrictions. “You can just come down here and work and there’s no distractions,” Day says. “People trust you. They’re really excited about what you’re doing, and they understand that you’re working, too. It’s real exciting being able to do your own project and put it together and see what it looks like.”

Through the media class, Day has learned how television news programs are pieced together — and picked up a measure of skepticism in the process. “I watch TV differently now. Watching news, I think about how they put it together. You start to realize that TV isn’t reality. Somebody sat down and edited it. You’re seeing it through the editor’s eyes.”

Down the hall, Anne Johnson sits in a dark editing booth, her long years of experience evident in the deftness with which she manipulates the images on the screen. Her fingers glide over the buttons like a flat rock skipping over still water, her glasses reflecting one of the thousands of images of Appalachia that Appalshop has documented.

In addition to her work on Chemical Valley, Johnson serves as director of Headwaters Television, an Appalshop unit formed in 1979 to provide a television outlet for its films and to expand into video.

“It seemed we were getting our films out, but more people were seeing them in New York City than were seeing them locally,” Johnson explains. “Productions are aimed for public television now. Initially it was for a very small audience right here in Letcher County.”

Headwaters receives some funding from PBS and Kentucky Educational Television, but like other Appalshop operations it must struggle to find money to finance productions.

“We have to raise funding from a combination of different foundations and federal agencies,” says Johnson. “Basically, it’s film by film by film or tape by tape by tape. We don’t make very much by selling them. It’s not a very profitable occupation.”

 

Mountain Label

At Appalshop, the bottom line is always measured in terms of cultural preservation, not commercial profit. That philosophy certainly extends to June Appal, the record label at Appalshop. Throughout the year, the recording studios leap to the sound of fiddles and mandolins, as local musicians record traditional mountain music which otherwise might never find its way to vinyl.

According to staff member Rich Kirby, June Appal was created in the mid-1970s by local musicians “who felt there just wasn’t a label that was responsible to the people around here.” Since its founding, he says, the studio has served as an outlet “for traditional music from Appalachia and new music inspired by the traditional.”

Maintaining the integrity of the music is more important to the label than the popularity of the record once distributed. “One of the main features of June Appal is that it’s never been commercial,” Kirby says. “We didn’t feel like taking our hat in our hand and taking this music to places like Nashville” where the musicians wouldn’t have a say in how the music was recorded. At June Appal, “traditional Appalachian musicians could record their music their way.”

Like all the media at Appalshop, June Appal tries to provide a vehicle for Appalachia’s cultural and historic identity. Producer Dee Davis insists that the center has simply tapped into an existing resource. “Had we not been around, there’d be just as much artistic talent and as much interest in talking about issues, but it would’ve had to find a different channel to come out.”

Whatever social, economic, and cultural upheavals the next two decades bring to the mountains, Davis says he expects Appalshop to remain true to its roots.

“I don’t want us to try to be Hollywood or Broadway or Nashville,” he says. “That way lies madness. I’d like to see us keep doing the same stuff — just getting better at it.”