The South speaks, we listen
by Elaine McMillion Sheldon for South Summit 2023 (Keynote Speech)
It’s an honor to join you today. I have great respect for the New Orleans Film Society — a model for the thriving film community — that not only creates powerful work — but supports new talent. New Orleans’ film community proves that generosity and success are not mutually exclusive.
Before I fully dive in — I want to give a brief sketch of my life so you know where I’m coming from — both literally and psychologically. I was born in Abingdon, Virginia, but grew up mostly in the coalfields of Logan, West Virginia. I come from four generations of coal miners. That’s not a novel fact where I’m from, but I have come to learn that people from elsewhere find that quite unusual. The people in my family work hard jobs that few people want to, my great uncles tell tall tales, my paw paw plays the fiddle by ear, and my great aunts grow corn and beans that they can for the winter. This is a slightly romanticized view of my family — as we — and the cultures that have defined our mountain life — are dwindling.
Our communities have been convinced to trade what has fed and sustained us for cheap goods from the Dollar General and encouraged our young people to leave and never return. Depression rates are high, educational opportunities are low. Our elders have no one to teach the traditions to. Within my own family exists the pride and pain I feel as an Appalachian. This is not a new story, it’s been occurring since before my time. I am a product of it. I was one of those kids that left — matter of fact I don’t remember a time as a kid when I didn’t want to be Oprah in Chicago or Katie Couric in NYC. For me, the journey was DC in 2009, New Orleans in 2010, Boston from 2010–2013, but since then I have been swinging in and out of Appalachia since I finished my MFA at Emerson College. Ten years of swinging around Appalachia and the South — living in Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee. Since 2020 I have found myself in Knoxville, TN. It’s here — near the Smoky Mountains — where I make life and work with my family — an immensely talented cinematographer and partner — Curren Sheldon, and our child.
When I graduated West Virginia University, I left Appalachia and the South for “opportunities.” And I continue to return for “opportunities.” It’s funny how that word works — it forces us to constantly reposition our values. Adults tell you to leave, and your own adult-mind later tells you to stay. This place is my sanctuary. But it’s not one place and it’s not always easy to find — it comes to me in moments. It’s the deep blue hues of the Smoky Mountains silhouetted against the sky and fog. It’s the way the light filters through the 90-feet tall leaves of a tulip poplar and onto the dirt path, a path lined with the poplar’s vibrant yellow and orange cup-shaped flowers. It’s the cold, and swift Cherry River with its uncertain and slippery rocks at Rudolph Falls. A complicated reality I face is that much of my sanctuary is not human-centered. Humans, and all our desires and ways of life, really muddle up the peace I feel when laying on the moss floors of the Cranberry Backcountry. Humans have taken these mountains, and decided they aren’t “enough.” They have taken that sanctuary and flattened it for the riches that lie beneath it. Those riches float on barges out of here to places unknown — to build steel skyscrapers and provide energy. Humans have buried the streams and cut down the tulip poplars on hunting grounds to make way for “progress.” But we all know it’s not a simple blame game — there’s economics, the environment, politics, race, class and powerlessness all at play — and with that said, I do love the people of this region. They have taught me to love this place. I have spent my life and career listening to them and learning from them — in all their complicated ways. On most days, I feel like an insider/outsider. But having spent some time living outside of the region, I choose to make The South & Appalachia home and in a lot of ways this place chooses us. On the best days, The South speaks to us and we listen…and sometimes we speak back.
Place:
Place haunts me. It influences everything I do, say, and believe. It haunts me because it is dynamic. Changing. Nuanced. An impossible idea to hang onto — because a place doesn’t belong to us, we belong to it. I am from what we call Appalachia — a loosely defined region made up of 13 states from southern New York to northern Mississippi — some may argue that Central Appalachia — where the state of West Virginia is the only FULL state in the borders — is not the South. Some may say it is. I don’t fuss a whole lot over these details. All I know is West Virginia is not the North and we share more in common — historically, economically, and culturally — with our Southern sisters.
My family has been in a relationship with Central Appalachia for nine generations — land of the Shawnee, Haudenosaunee, and Cherokee among others. Before digging coal, they logged trees, and before trees, they tilled and hunted the land. Today, I continue to be part of that messy unfolding, in a place so steep and rugged. What my family passed to me isn’t tangible — like property, or heirlooms — but they passed on a feeling, a relationship. A belief that there is life to be lived here that can be worthwhile, teach you something. This legacy is a choice that underlines that I belong to something, it doesn’t belong to me.
This is not a simple relationship — at times it is a love/hate relationship. Friend and poet, Crystal Good, and I have often talked about how being from this place is like being in an emotionally abusive relationship. You love it so deeply, but it does not always love you back. Sometimes you feel an outright rejection from this place, even as you continue to show devotion. Appalachia and the South are places of contradictions. No matter how many parachute journalists want to come in and narrowly define us to sell cheap headlines, there is no way to singularly define who we are, and what this place is.
What Appalachia has taught me as a filmmaker:
For the past decade, I have spent my life listening to my community. I have made projects that teach others to document their own lives. I have spent years following the same people with my camera. More importantly, I have been welcomed into the homes and onto the porches of people to just sit and listen — not to document. With previous films — Heroin(e) and Recovery Boys — we aimed to make something that was honest — showing the darkness — but not making people feel completely hopeless about the situation at hand — the opioid crisis that has stolen many loved ones. We did this by showing the full range of human emotions. And quiet moments — the smiles, the laughter, after the dark times. The times that mentally rebalance someone back into a state that allows them to proceed the next day. In being patient, you show the tiny successes — as they are the foundation of hope. Hope does not mean full optimism or pessimism — but a belief that if we keep pushing forward something will come of it. With staying longer and being patient you learn to sit with the difficult times. So we sat longer and deeper with the local helpers. Any filmmaker can tell you that when you sit long enough you learn a valuable lesson. That life, and the stories we tell, are not a constant state of any one single emotion. We have the honor of witnessing ups and downs and therefore accepting the natural order of life — changing. It then becomes our responsibility to let this complexity of life muddle up our stories to tell a more nuanced view.
I am proud of both of these films — and feel they have added more positive impacts than negative to the world — but they were not always fun to make. They were frustrating at times. They were discouraging — another overdose, another person back on the street, back in jail. Documenting substance use disorder — felt like chasing a ghost. So much of the struggle is internal — a turmoil that is difficult and ethically murky to depict. The films also made me grow exponentially as a fellow member of society. I care more — I deeply care. I want to see these films be used for change — change in all its complicated forms, grassroots change, custom-fit for communities in need, not just one prescriptive solution. Our role was always to be compassionate but also to gently nudge a more honest and difficult conversation through cinema.
These two films left me with questions about my role as documentarian.
I questioned the parallel roles of the witness and that of the person being observed.
I questioned the role of the filmmaker — what was I even doing in these spaces I would otherwise not be in without a camera?
I questioned if they — the roles of observer and the observed — would ever collide in my work — where the filmmaker, as witness, was also in some way being observed.
I questioned if documenting joy was just as valuable as documenting pain.
I questioned if play and imagination could ever make their way into these heavy topics that leave me feeling frozen most days.
It was through these questions I started asking if my nonfiction film could show life as we hope it to be, rather than just the plight of “what is.”
King Coal:
Speaking of “what is,” coal has been king in Central Appalachia for over a hundred years. The resource rules everything. This is the starting point of my latest film “King Coal.”
The film started in 2019 by documenting coal culture, seen through coal dust runs, pageants, coal shoveling contests, and coal education in the classroom. Some of these things which I grew up doing as a kid. Co-Producer Molly Born and I sought these rituals and traditions out — as documenting a living archive. It quickly became clear these coal-related rituals were dying traditions — and many of them traditions born out of people’s fears of “the king” dying. So we started to ask, what new rituals do we need in-life and in-film to help us live. This led us to think more about the already-blurred lines between myth and reality — of the power and influence of coal — when it comes to life in the coalfields.
A dream of the future:
Documenting coal culture wasn’t enough. It was the seed for the film, but not the flower. The idea/the seed needed patience and time. It needed nurturing. Oftentimes our first ideas are too obvious — but this process of germinating is not a passive experience. It is one I lost sleep over. Watering it daily through sitting down and forcing myself to write. Through digging through the archives. Through relearning my own history and seeing the blindspots. Through letting go of what was acceptable and making room for anything else.
We looked to other traditions — poetry, folklore, magical realism, ghost stories, fables, dance and movement, the land itself, sound art, and a percussive score, among other cinematic tools — to help guide the final language of the film.
In fables and fairytales, I started observing the techniques used to progress plot and story, where the magical is metaphorical: where materials are strange (hair is made of memories), supernatural experiences are plot twists (a dead horse heads speak), objects hold magic power (a bed can walk and swim), where ghosts are real, and dreams hold power. Stories that are mischievous, that have desires and low points where the person feels they can’t go on any longer, and journeys with strangers that lead them astray — but towards a goal.
Some of these techniques might seem very far from non-fiction, but for the purposes of play we just began to allow ourselves to think of coal in a way removed from our highly divisive and politicized view of it and more into the way a fable might frame the specter of coal. It was through these playful questions that I started asking what would happen if a film models life as we want it to be, and less as “it is.” Our ultimate belief and mantra for the film, as producer Shane Boris expressed, is that in order to tell a NEW story we had to tell it in a NEW way.
Ultimately the entire film exhibits care work and the final scene — in which we staged a funeral for king coal himself — is a moment to grieve. A moment created for the film but a very authentic and real experience for those that participated and brought their own eulogies. It represents the best of the hybrid form, in our eyes, a staged moment where nonfiction can occur, but otherwise wouldn’t. A real and true impact, not after the fact, but during the filming. Through hybrid filmmaking, we could explore and co-create the real and imagined rituals in the kingdom and through ritual we can learn how to move on.
The film itself resists being a tour of despair. It resists just showing you the oddities and laughing, but instead digs deeper to the why. The coalfields have long been seen as having reached their end. But it’s a lack of imagination that is our true crisis. Standing in the way of who and what we can become beyond coal. Leaders and coal barons — sometimes one in the same — stay in power as long as we lack agency to tell our own stories.
The film also models in-ways what civil discourse can look like. It requires a recognition of the pain and sorrow, and the beauty and hope. It recognizes the mistakes of the past, but allows us to free ourselves from fatalism, and the believing that our history is the only thing that determines our future.
The film partially centers the experience of two girls — Lanie and Gabby who are non-actors, West Virginia kids with coal ties in their family. We cast them at local dance studios. They represent in many ways what it is like to be a kid in the coalfields, while also allowing us a new entry — through humor, new life and irony — into this old story of extraction. Through them we are left to ask — what is left for them in the region?
In the end, I learned that I needed to break open my ways of working. Of re-learning how to tell stories, how to add more play into my nonfiction- to get to a deeper — more internal — truth — beyond an observed truth.
My community is in need of grieving as a way of moving through the loss and processing the impact coal has had on us. But I also was in need of this. I used this film as a way to grieve with my community and family.
Plenty of films have reckoned with the past. But what about now? Who is dreaming for today, for the future. What will be the next story? The imprint of coal will be with us forever, like the coral in the limestone our souls are rippled with the presence of it. There’s more jobs to be had at fast food than in the mines today. But we’re holding out hope for a return because to wish for anything new is to be anti-coal here. This robs the people of their dignity to survive and their greatest resource: their imagination. We forget that it took imagination to get us where we are. That someone at some time looked upon this place and imagined the coal industry being the king of the people. We don’t want to say that was imagination because that could mean imagination doesn’t always end well, but it was. Someone saw what this place was to be before it became this place. Now it is our turn to see what we will be next.
I want this film to make way for our dream of what’s next.
Responses:
More than any other film I have ever made, this film was an incredible collaboration. The contributions of our talented and bold team made this film — a dream I once had — a reality. It’s important to acknowledge the people who support this work.
Producers, Shane Boris, Diane Becker and Peggy Drexler; Co-producer Molly Born; Director of Photography and Co-Producer, Curren Sheldon; Editor, Iva Radivojevic; Associate Producers, Clara Hazelett and Elijah Stevens; Composer, Bobak Lotfipour; Sound Recordist, Billy Wirasnik; Breath Artist, Shodekeh; Contributing Writers, Logan Hill and Heather Hannah; Executive Producers, Heather Baldry and Katherine Drexler and funders: Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Development Fund, Field of Vision, Catapult, WV Humanities Council, Creative Capital, the Guggenheim Foundation and The University of Tennessee School of Art.
The film premiered at Sundance 2023 and has screened at 13 film festivals across the U.S. It hasn’t had a wide release yet, but I have received messages from people as far as Ukrainian coalfields and back home in the West Virginia coalfields.
This message from a young person who saw the film:
I’ve been absolutely gutted since moving back to WV. Constant beatdowns and failures, especially in my field of political work. I watched King Coal this weekend because I needed a reminder of why I came back. Watching took me back to my complicated but really great and unique childhood. I spent so much time in near solitude exploring the land. The ghost power of coal influences my day to day work. Its presence is always felt in more ways than I wish to count. Your poetry reminded me that I’m not imagining it. I’ve not really seen my experience in WV represented until now.
Recent revelations:
A friend recently saw “King Coal” and noted that she was surprised at how hopeful it was. She commended me for finding that hope. For looking into the deep recesses to see what lies there beneath the stories of pain and trauma. But I said something that surprised even me at that moment — I said “hope is sometimes hard to see…actually I found it most when I closed my eyes.”
This was a moment of revelation for me. I have come to understand this place differently over the decade I have been making work here. I have aged with these mountains, they have taught me how much I don’t know about life. My trajectory in storytelling was quite straightforward — kids from the coalfields can’t be artists. So we choose practical things, like journalism. And then for years, I have found my way back to that artist kid in the coalfields who just wanted to tell stories. A kid that believed every word of every fable, not because I was too naive to think it was “real,” but because even though it was “made up” it was truer to me about life than anything an adult was telling me. I feel a great sense of freedom these days since making this latest film. I only recently came into ownership of my own voice. If you don’t own your voice, all I can say is “give it time.” I had to listen to and learn from the voices of others before I discovered what my own voice wanted to say. Don’t rush this process. When you find it, you will weep and be grateful for the years it took you to get there.
My hope for southern storytellers — what we bring to the cinematic landscape
I want to encourage you all to be patient in your journey as Southern artists. I also want to tell the young people of the South and Appalachia — that it’s okay to leave. OF COURSE, I do want people to stay and fight but maybe your fight for this place is out in the world — an ambassador. Sometimes, there is clarity with distance. And sometimes that clarity will lead you right back here, where you started. I hope you can find your sanctuary here, and help the South build the community it should be. But as both an insider and outsider — someone who has left and returned — I can tell you that there are seasons in our life where we are most useful here or there, and that we carry this place with us, wherever we go, but the South of the future should not be our burden. It should be our blessing — something we choose. Carrying what serves us, and leaving behind and reconciling what has been damaging.
I am excited for new southern storytellers. Stories that aren’t like mine held to this place for 9 generations. I’m in favor of more fluctuation. I am in favor of less romanticism, and more honesty — even if that means using fiction to tell the truth.
I’d encourage us all to ponder what our stories can do beyond documenting what we can see, but instead to mourn, celebrate, and imagine — to create the world we want to see. I encourage you to ask what role your own visions and dreams play in our Southern cinema? We so often dream of having impact with our films. We make them and then we wait for that change to come. We push and often we don’t see results. But what if the making of the film itself could be part of the impact? What if the film in-process, as a ritual, could bring us together before it’s even “finished.” I encourage you, as my editor Iva Rad did me, to find the one question you seek to answer with your stories. My question today: “WHO ARE WITHOUT A KING?” An unanswerable question at this moment, but a call I sent out through the hills and I patiently await the responses.
Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elaine McMillion Sheldon is an Academy Award-nominated and Emmy and Peabody-winning filmmaker. She just premiered her latest film KING COAL at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Sheldon is the director of two Netflix Original Documentaries — HEROIN(E) and RECOVERY BOYS- that explore America’s opioid crisis. She has been named a Creative Capital Awardee, Guggenheim Fellow, a USA Fellow by United States Artists, and one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” by Filmmaker Magazine.
This piece was commissioned by the New Orleans Film Society for South Summit 2023. South Summit received critical support from JustFilms Ford Foundation, which is part of the Ford Foundation’s Creativity and Free Expression program and is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Arts Council New Orleans.
