Catherine Pancake screened Black Diamonds: Mountaintop Removal and the Battle for Coalfield Justice at Docs In Progress® in July 2006. The film, about the impact of surface coal extraction on the environment and communities of Appalachian West Virginia, has become a shining example of how a documentary can have an by focusing on grassroots outreach. We talked to Pancake about her approach to the film and particularly to its outreach.
No stranger to the world of film, Pancake had established herself as a musician and avant garde filmmaker in Baltimore, Maryland. Black Diamonds, however, would be her first documentary. “Foolishly, I felt that the documentary form would be as easy if not easier than personal experimental work because the facts are obvious and the story lines seemed more obvious,” recalls Pancake. “However, I quickly learned that the art of making a documentary, especially a feature, went way, way beyond anything I had attempted before. Crafting a compelling and dramatic story from a slow-moving struggle that mostly involves a lot of law suits, legislative action, waiting, monitoring mine sites, and gathering evidence about environmental violations was extremely hard.”
Pancake did not go it alone. She collaborated with her sister Ann, a fiction writer who was also passionate about the issue of mountaintop removal. The fact that the two were natives of West Virginia made a difference in being able to get access to the story and the characters. “We had some immediate connections and the ability to talk about the love of the mountains, the cultural value of the people, and the price we were willing to pay with our time and energy to work on the project,” says Pancake. “We were also very clear that one of our goals upfront was to avoid any Appalachian stereotyping or presentation of them that would in any way diminish their personal integrity.”
One of the keys to their approach was to involve community activist groups early on in the process. “We first contacted more visible Appalachian groups such as Appalachian Voices and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition that were already performing outreach to spread the word about the issue. They were very responsive. These ‘pro’ activists then referred us to the citizens in the community who were literally risking jobs, safety, and reputations to fight the issue in their own small towns.” Even participating in the film was a risk for some of them notes Pancake. “In order to gain the trust of the local activists, we had to demonstrate that we had a very serious interest in the issue and that we understood the risks they were taking in allowing themselves to be documented on camera with a position un-popular with the local coal industry and unions.”
The film ultimately took six years to complete, not uncommon in the world of independent documentary. Pancake felt is was important to “make sure that have an end in sight and that you conclude the piece at the right time. We intended to end in 2004, but extended the film because a lot of other relevant things happened in the movement in 2005 that we felt we had to include.”
While funding can be one of the challenges for many independent documentaries like Black Diamonds, Pancake kept herself focused. She feels it’s important to “keep your fund-raising hat on as much as possible without being too annoying. Try to keep materials ready as you do the work in progress. Have your short cuts, trailers and other information on hand upfront. Funders can get in a mood to provide money , but by the time you get them a cut they may be on to other things. Just because you work on something for a long time doesn’t necessarily mean anyone will care.”
Keeping her own motivation along the way came from getting feedback at different stages of the project. “This is a very different psychological process from presenting personal work that goes straight from one’s mind to the screen with a singular and subjective motivation.” Pancake’s sister Ann and Elizabeth McGraw, a freelance editor who cared about the issue “provided a ton of feedback and notes” for the first cut. The filmmaker also showed the film to others slowly to get on-going feedback about what they like and disliked. She held a focus group at The Creative Alliance in Baltimore with about 20 people who had various degrees of knowledge about the issue. Her post-production team at Mission Media provided some polish to the film.
By the time Pancake screened the work at Docs In Progress, the film was close to the fine cut and just needed one last reality check. “Docs In Progress was invaluable in providing concrete feedback on the piece. The feedback I got went beyond a discussion of the subject matter and into the actual structure of the piece in a real and valuable way. It can be extremely hard to get this kind of feedback for free – and even if you try to pay. I really wish I would have been more involved with Docs In Progress programs before I started the piece as I would have approached quite a few things differently and more effectively in terms of networking and funding.”
Pancake also found grounding in keeping her creative juices flowing through working on other projects “so everything in your creative life isn’t riding on one project. I made other short pieces, did musical projects and other collaborations to try to not have all my eggs emotionally in one basket.” She also feels it is important to be inspired by the work of other filmmakers. “Obviously Barbara Kopple was a filmmaker I studied a lot on my own,” says Pancake about the documentarian who helped humanize Appalachia with her groundbreaking 1976 film Harlan County USA. But Pancake does not limit herself to documentaries. “I watch a ton of films constantly and I’m influenced by everyone from Werner Herzog (who I have very conflicted feelings about) to Chan-wook Park to Jane Campion to Serge Leone!! I also have a rotating list of experimental film-makers I watch – Nancy Andrews, Suzan Pitt, Ana Hallin, Jenni Olsen, etc.” In terms of documentaries, Pancake notes that she recently saw Maxed Out, James Scurlock’s incisive documentary about the credit card industry and felt “it should be required viewing for all high schools students.”
She has similar hopes for her own film and is working hard on outreach. While many filmmakers may only aspire to seeing their films broadcast or have a theatrical run, Pancake sees the power of her documentary as something much broader – a tool which can be used in activism. “My priority in the getting the film out was to try to get it shown in the areas most impacted by the environmental harm. Many Appalachian academics, activists, and others who follow the issue had been waiting for the film to be available, so we had been keeping a database of all the folks who desperately needed the film to help demonstrate the effect of the practice on the citizens.” The advance “buzz” about the film created a ready-market and screenings were booked well in advance, especially in Appalachian communities in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The grassroots approach helped Pancake succeed in getting funding for outreach from the Paul Robeson Fund [Docs in Progress also recently talked to the Fund's Director of Grantmaking, Trinh Duong] As a result, Pancake was able to provide free DVDs to activist groups so they could distribute them to people in low income coal communities. The film has also been used and promoted by national environmental groups working to raise awareness of the human impact of coal.
Pancake sees this national focus as key since she doesn’t want her film to be seen as just a local interest story. “I think the film is but another message and piece of evidence that helps people in West Virginia see how the coal industry is not helping the state or its future. Because of the state’s political system and its reliance on the coal industry for campaign money, I think change will only come from a national push forcing the state to stop.” The film has played at festivals, universities, and conferences in places as far afield as Anchorage, Alaska and New Orleans, Louisiana. The Rain Forest Action Network has worked hard to arrange for screenings in San Francisco and other West Coast cities. A 72-minute version of the film was also acquired by Bullfrog Films, a leading U.S. educational distributor which specializes in environmental topics. “We are continuing to push hard for screening in the Northeast, particularly with the Ivy League schools to try to reach those students and academics who are cultivating the people who will more than likely be in positions of privilege and power making decisions about energy production and usage in the US.” And Pancake does not rule out the possibility of getting an international distributor since she believes the topic can have a universal resonance, especially in countries with strong environmental activist movements.
“I’m personally interested in provocation, revealing social stress and conflict, the ability to bring an aesthetic to the subject matter that takes it into a cinematic realm somehow.” Pancake feels she has grown tremendously as a filmmaker through the process of making the film. “I feel extremely proud to have completed a distributed feature before I turned 40. It basically expanded my knowledge on all levels, technically, creatively, relationships gained, and a general better understand of the national documentary market.” For Pancake, the accomplishments are measured by the impact the film has on individuals. “I’ve gotten a few standing ovations which feels good, but the best outcomes are when you inspire another artist or create some sort of lasting change. A Maryland Institute College of Art student wrote a grant to do a photography project on coal surface mine sites after seeing my doc. He won the 4k grant and will have exhibitions in Baltimore and Chicago. Students at a small college where I showed the film restarted an environmental group to press the school on green energy. These things are moments of success.”
BLACK DIAMONDS continues to be screened at venues across the country, including an upcoming screening at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV on October 29, 2007. For more information, visit the film’s official website or to arrange a screening or get a copy of the film, contact Bullfrog Films. In the meantime, Pancake is shooting a 35 mm short film based on comical haikus by Baltimore poet Jai Brooks and is laying the groundwork for some other short narrative pieces and possibly a larger documentary in Baltimore.
