2002 Great Lakes Independent Film Festival

Razing Appalachia

Category: Documentary Feature 1hr 12min
Director: Sasha Waters

In the misty folds of the Appalachian mountains lies Pigeonroost hollow, in Blair, West Virginia. With its narrow creek and crawdads, its wild ginseng and raccoons, Pigeonroost looks as it might have a century ago -- a woody haven tucked away from time and technology. But for how long? And at what price? In May 1998, Arch Coal, Inc. announced it would expand its Dal-Tex strip mine just above the small town of Blair. But lifetime residents said too many had already been bought out or chased away by the giant mine, and that Arch Coal's planned expansion was the final threat to their once-tranquil way of life. Forty families -- where there were once 300 -- stayed in Blair. Razing Appalachia is the story of their remarkable fight -- against the second-largest coal company in America, against the know-nothing state political leaders and, unhappily, against the 400 union miners whose jobs were on the line.

Director: Sasha Waters
Sasha Waters was born in Brooklyn, NY. While still in elementary school in the 1970s, she protested against Nestle and nuclear power and worked on the campaign of independent candidate for president John Anderson. After a year at the University of Michigan, Waters returned to New York to receive her BA in Photography at the School of Visual Arts. Waters got her start in filmmaking as an intern for Academy Award-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple whom she met while waiting tables at Spring Street Natural Restaurant in SoHo. In 1996, Waters left New York for Philadelphia, where she received her MFA in Film & Media Arts from Temple University, and worked as a segment producer for the environmental program GreenWorks for Pennsylvania. Since 2000, she has been an Assistant Professor of Nonfiction Production in the Department of Cinema & Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa. She currently lives in a house with a white picket fence in Iowa City, with a man whose nieces refer to him as "weird Uncle Johnny."