At the beginning of the 1960s, Appalachia’s struggle with poverty was no secret.
Before JFK ideated the Appalachian Regional Committee or President Johnson and Ladybird stood on Tom Fletcher’s porch in Martin County, Kentucky, the mountainous states that made up the region had the highest poverty rate and percentage of working poor in the nation. Some research indicated that as much as one third of the region’s population was living in poverty.
In response to the newly declared War on Poverty in Appalachia, battalions of nonprofit organizations, government programs and eager journalists from across the country were turning their forces to the mountains. While this jumpstarted valuable change for the region, all the new attention snowballed into years-long bludgeoning from national media with stereotype-rife, sensationalized storytelling that demonized corners of Appalachia, like eastern Kentucky, into the poster child of struggle to the rest of America. Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCaroll described the phenomenon best in their book, Appalachian Reckoning: “Many felt that the region’s story was being told by the wrong voices. Or at least too few voices. After President Johnson traveled to Appalachia in 1964 to bring media attention to its needs as part of his launch of this massive economic support program, many filmmakers and documentary crews followed those well-rutted dirt roads into the same hollows.”
By the end of the decade, there was a myriad of these simplistic depictions. Outsiders watched firsthand as the media sculpted an all-white, all-poor, all-backwards image of the region. But there was also a bastion of new agents geared to actually combat the War on Poverty. One such outlet was a filmmaking workshop that launched in 1969. Fresh out of grad school at Yale and not much older than the students he aimed to teach, Bill Richardson came to eastern Kentucky in order to test the hypothesis presented in his master’s thesis: video equipment had the power to be “an amazing recorder of community.” Putting cameras in youths’ hands would mean equipping them with a toolbelt of employable media skills and encouraging them to stay in the region. For the first time, professional filmmakers had a chance to build a career in a rural community like Letcher County.
While his theory proved true, and dozens of creatives unlocked valuable new technical skills, something even stronger was galvanized. When young people got cameras in their hands, they saw their community. Those early filmmakers-in-the-making saw their community for who and what it truly was. Netted by nuance, they captured the struggles of the region, devoid of the “poverty porn” exploitation that had become all too common with stories about their community, and in doing so also captured something novel: joy. A simple recipe to counter years worth of media lampooning, the small workshop aimed at squashing poverty was actually laying the foundation for what would become the multifaceted arts powerhouse known today as Appalshop.
In the decades since, Appalshop has remained in Whitesburg, Kentucky, cultivating millions in grant support to continue expanding its reach. And it’s certainly expanded exponentially over the years: the organization blossomed into a campus of offshoots including radio, theatre, photography, books, its own record label, sustainable energy, youth advocacy and of course, film.
Filmmaking has always remained at the core of Appalshop’s work. Almost 20 years after that first workshop, the filmmakers involved were no longer the young people they originally sought to address. They were adults now, starting families, and they recognized the valuable point of view lost when it’s not young people looking at their community. So in response, in 1988, the organization officially founded the Appalachian Media Institute (AMI) to live up to its original mission and continue training Appalachian youth. Since then, the institute has placed cameras in the hands of over 1,200 young creatives and made space for them to talk about issues that matter to their community most.
Through its flagship program, the Summer Documentary Institute, 14 to 22-year-olds from across Kentucky and greater Appalachia are plunged into an eight week intensive course. The first four weeks are for media literacy training and hands-on workshops, like lighting or writing to understand the technical side of filmmaking while eliminating bias. Then for the last four weeks, they’re the filmmakers. Divided into three groups, they spend four weeks producing a short documentary about the region. Young creatives explore the same complex issues as those early workshops — the declining coal economy, legacy of environmental damage, high unemployment rates or poor educational opportunities — while also infusing contemporary issues that matter to them now, such as the opioid epidemic, LGBTQIA+ equality, reproductive rights and racial justice.
To many, it’s perhaps the most interesting catalog of work from the organization, providing the distinct perspective of what it means to be a young person in Appalachia. There’s an unjaded lens to storytelling at that age, undaunted by politics or potential backlash. The catalog is ever-growing, showing the evolution of the region over 35 years. Students leave the program changed — not only as adept media makers screening films at renowned institutions like NPR, the Museum of Modern Art or Sundance — but also changed as people.
Hot off of being nominated for a regional Emmy award (a feat not uncommon for former SDI interns), young filmmaker Sean Hall described it best: “To say it fundamentally changed my life would be a dramatic understatement,” he said of the program. “There’s no way I would’ve pursued a career in film and photography without the support and encouragement of Appalshop.”
Former and current student interns agree, the program is pretty great. But, that success is due in large part to outstanding leaders running the program from behind the scenes — educators like Willa Johnson. Willa is the current director of the film department for Appalshop, but long before she stepped into that role, she was one of those student interns too.
The organization first entered her life in high school when Appalshop contacted her yearbook teacher at Fleming-Neon High to ask if they could start a media club at the school. “I was the only kid that showed up,” Willa said. Even so, they launched the club, and Lydia Moyer made the drive from Appalshop each week to teach Willa and one or two inconsistent stragglers how to navigate a camera and tell stories. She was immediately hooked.
“My first film ever actually was on 9/11, which happened my sophomore year of high school,” Willa said. “It was really cheesy — like full-on has the Alan Jackson song at the end of it. I can’t even remember the name of it and don’t have a copy of it anymore. But, that was my first film ever! I will always hold that really special because she kept showing up for one outcast student who just really wanted to learn journalism.”
Despite her newfound love, after graduation day, Willa was stuck. Years of social standards imposed the expectation that the only career paths available for women were nursing or teaching. She felt siloed. “I froze and didn’t leave. I didn’t go to school. I didn’t want to teach. I didn’t want to be a nurse. So I just didn’t do anything,” Willa said, “But I knew what I wanted to do, and I couldn’t do it, which was storytelling. I thought I had to go overseas or I had to be at CNN.”
Years passed. She was living in East Tennessee with her sister working at a movie theater when a friend notified her that applications were now open for Appalshop’s Summer Documentary Institute back home in Kentucky, and that Willa would be a perfect fit.
She applied and got in. Then had, as she described, a “truly life changing experience” learning the ins-and-outs of the film industry and making connections with other storytellers, dissecting and analyzing her community in poignant ways she had always felt growing up. “I always felt like a weirdo-old-soul for caring about things like this and for wanting to do storytelling,” she explained “I finally saw career paths, for women especially. I had women educators who were documentary filmmakers, who were doing this in my community! Someone with my accent could be doing this for a living, and I didn’t have to lose this part of myself.”
Her first summer was in 2007 when she was 21 — one of the oldest kids in the program. At the time, coal-to-liquid fuel was being touted to rural mining communities as the new technology set to “save them.” It quickly became the hot button issue for the community, and her cohort of fellow youth interns set out to make a film simply questioning why the folks around them were so upset.
“As we got into it, we quickly realized there’s a lot we had to learn with the politics behind things. Realizing, oh this isn’t for the community, this is for military vehicles. And who has to mine that coal? What’s the price they’re paying for that?” Willa said. “I just grew up knowing coal was part of life, not questioning if it was weird that it was such a dangerous life occupation, or that it’s weird that your house shakes every day after a siren goes off. None of that was weird to me.”
The short film, True Cost of Coal, spotlighted how the extractive practices had afflicted the community with environmental and health problems through personal stories of the folks living there. It quickly garnered momentum as the national conversation around the industry was coming to a head. Willa explained that the burst of attention also came with repercussions. She grew up the daughter and sister of coal truck drivers and the granddaughter of coal miners. Then here she was making a film questioning how safe and fair the industry is. “It was never an issue with my dad … you know, it was his job, but he was disabled from a coal truck accident. He wasn’t so loyal to the corporation,” Willa explained. “But there were people in my family who really kept me out for a long time because I was doing this thing that was threatening their livelihoods. So it was hard to tell that story. It was hard to face the backlash. But, it also made me a stronger storyteller.”
With the short, Willa was able to travel to New York, Boston and even Indonesia, sharing the story of her community from the perspective of a young person living there. She connected with young folks around the globe who had shared goals and lived experiences. And more than that, it reignited her passion for storytelling with a now-tangible path for the future after years lost.
“Suddenly, a camera was put in my hand that I could have never afforded, and all the thoughts and opinions I had weren’t just me being an ‘overly opinionated young woman.’ There was a reason I felt and thought about things critically the way I did,” she explained. “I found a community that I really needed to find at a really crucial time, and I just never looked back.”
After bouncing between nonprofit and independent media work for a number of years, Willa returned to Appalshop as the director of the Appalachian Media Institute in 2017 with the goal of fostering that sense of community by continuing to put power in the hands of the young people who need it most. In the years since, Willa’s worked closely with each summer cohort to create films that matter most to the young people of today. She and the team got to see the payoff of their training first hand as students created their own award-winning shorts about big topics. Films such as The Fallout, a powerful vignette about substance abuse, addiction and recovery, or No Such Right: The End of Roe in Appalachia, a snapshot in time after the landmark fall of Roe v. Wade, are just a few recent standouts Willa mentioned in a catalog of “brilliant work.”
It’s clear the goal of the organization has grown from just training filmmakers. It’s teaching young creatives how to objectively look at the world around them and share that story through any medium or capacity. Willa’s role as an educator is simply to provide these young people a supportive environment to grow.
“I really struggled as a young woman in the region because there were only two career paths for me. Then I got to a place where I saw really strong women in leadership doing this job I wanted, and they made such a difference on me,” Willa explained. “I wanted to give this to other young girls from the region. Not to say I’m not giving it to all the kids of course, but the part that really feeds me is whenever I see young women feel secure and being able to voice their opinion.”
To find her biggest source of pride, really she just needs to look at her staff. “It’s all young people I’ve trained and hired. And they’re from the region, and they’re doing the work, and they didn’t have to spend ten years bouncing back and forth to figure it out. I just have this real source of pride — it’s like the literal fruit of your labor. I just feel really proud that I didn’t make a path they couldn’t follow.”
Willa told me about one staff member in particular named Nik. Back when Nik was a teen vying for a spot in the Summer Documentary Institute, Willa thought they didn’t want to be there. Every cue during the interview Willa interpreted as disinterest, “too cool to be there,” or “only there to hang with friends for the summer.” After hesitantly taking a chance and accepting them into the program, one of her first interactions with Nik was a fiery, self-justifying outburst defending their editing choices after some of Willa’s constructive criticism.
It wasn’t until later Willa realized that this persona was actually masking a deep shyness. And that “attitude” was simply passion looking for a way out. “They had never been given a space to be themselves for who they are in a room,” Willa explained. When given that space, suddenly Nik was everywhere.
“Every program I had to offer after that — every fall or spring lab, every audio workshop, archive workshop — they were there, signed up ready to take it and wanting to participate. They go to college and change their major from law to convergent media, very sorry to their parents,” Willa laughed. “Then they come back home and show up at Appalshop repeatedly asking: ‘What work do you need done? How can I do this? Where do you need me?’ And this person, suddenly I realized, was me at 17 years old.”
Willa also spent years questioning where she belonged. She also needed to find the right community to kindle her creativity. Her passion when she created that first film was burning so bright she couldn’t worry if others got burnt along the way. Willa quickly knew she had misjudged the making of the next great student-turned-educator.
“They showed up repeatedly and said, ‘I want this for myself.’ Now I get to see them go into schools and recruit other young people. They’re gonna be my lead educator this summer. They have worked so hard at this and care so much,” Willa explained. “Sometimes when you’re in this work for years, you can start to feel weary, but when I see them show up excited with their notebook full of notes they’ve made about summer programming, it just gives me this refreshing moment of, ‘Oh, yeah, this is why we’re here.’ And this was me 10 years ago. And in 10 years, they’ll be hopefully sitting here leading students as an employee.”
Check out this year’s batch of Summer Documentary Institute films on Appalshop’s YouTube page here.
Photos courtesy of Hannah Adams Asbury & Appalshop staff
