Date:
Location:
About the Film
A lyrical tapestry of a place and people, King Coal meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, and the myths it has created. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon reshapes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking in a spectacularly beautiful and deeply moving immersion into Central Appalachia where coal is not just a resource, but a way of life, imagining the ways a community can re-envision itself. While deeply situated in the regions under the reign of King Coal, where McMillion Sheldon has lived and worked her entire life, the film transcends time and place, emphasizing the ways in which all are connected through an immersive mosaic of belonging, ritual, and imagination. Emerging from the long shadows of the coal mines, King Coal untangles the pain from the beauty, and illuminates the innately human capacity for change.
Free and open to the public.
This event is co-sponsored by the Committee on Degrees in Folklore & Mythology, the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy, and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.
This event is part of the Committee on Degrees in Folklore & Mythology's 2024 Symposium, Appalachia Betwixt & Between: Folkloristic Perspectives on a Region in Flux.
About the Speakers
Elaine McMillion Sheldon is director, producer, co-editor of King Coal, and is an Academy Award-nominated, and Emmy and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker. 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. Her latest film, KING COAL, premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. McMillion Sheldon was raised in West Virginia and lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Jason de Lara Molesky is a Mahindra Humanities Center Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor of English at Saint Louis University (beginning in 2024), with specialties in modern and contemporary American literature. He holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi and a PhD from Princeton University. His book project, Company Town Archipelago: Culture, Environment, and American Corporate Empire, examines the daring archive of art and activism that has emerged from communities governed by US corporations.
Sarah Craycraft is Head Tutor and Lecturer of Folklore and Mythology at Harvard. Her work explores rurality and the role of young people in cultural transmission in contemporary Bulgaria and Appalachia, through a folkloristic lens. Her book in progress, The Village Project: Reimagining, Rebuilding, and Reconnecting in Contemporary Bulgaria, investigates the role of young Bulgarians in village revitalization.