Deep Down
Directors: Jen Gilomen, Sally Rubin
Category: Environment; Women & Families
Total Running Time: 57 min.
Release Date: 2010
Website: http://deepdownfilm.org
Synopsis
Deep in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Kentucky, where coal is king, Beverly May and Terry Ratliff find themselves at the center of a contentious community battle over a proposed mountaintop-removal coal mine.
This film explores the quandary between an industry (coal) that has supported and sustained a region for generations, and the environmental damage this industry does through the practice of mountaintop removal. This is a grassroots-level story of longtime residents who have different opinions about taking on a corporation. On a more macro scale, this is a tale of the power of an empowered citizenry in a democracy.
Trailer
About the Filmmakers
JEN GILOMEN is director of public media strategies at the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC). Her 2005 documentary In My Shoes: Stories of Youth with LGBT Parents won the Audience Award for Best Short at the Frameline Film Festival and is now distributed to classrooms and communities nationwide. In 2007, Gilomen was the director of photography on Delta Rising, a feature-length documentary about the blues starring Morgan Freeman and several well-known blues musicians. Her films have screened in the US, Mexico, Brazil, France, England, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, Spain and Italy.
SALLY RUBIN is a documentary filmmaker and editor based in Los Angeles. Her career has included films for PBS' Frontline, POV, Independent Lens and American Experience series, as well as several other Sundance and Slamdance favorites, such as WGBH's Africans in America (1996), and David Sutherland's award-winning The Farmer's Wife (1998). In addition, Rubin was the associate producer of Sutherland's recent smash hit, the six-hour Frontline special Country Boys (2006). Her film The Last Mountain (2004) has aired on regional PBS stations, and Cut (2003) is used in universities across the country. She co-edited the fall 2006 release Iraq for Sale (2006), directed by Robert Greenwald, and three episodes of the ACLU's Freedom Files, executive-produced by Greenwald.