The World Made Straight

In seeking her own redemption from the one man of whom she is most afraid, 10-year-old Cadi Forbes discovers a secret sin haunting her community of Welsh immigrants in 1850s Appalachia.

An urgent phone call pulls a Yale Law student back to his Ohio hometown, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.

A troubled woman seeks out the child she gave up for adoption; a gay motel owner takes in a handsome drifter; and the wife of a preacher frets that a gay couple has moved in across the street. All of their lives will intersect as Loggerheads subtly draws out their secret losses and desires.

A special group of military veteran hikers help a fellow vet battle depression, PTSD, and suicidal tendencies as he hikes the Appalachian Trail while carrying 363 military name tapes on a mission to prevent veteran suicide. A true story.

Deep in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in West Virginia, where every man owns a gun and a moonshine still, abides living legend Jesco White, "the dancing outlaw". As a boy Jesco was in and out of reform school and the insane asylum. To keep him out of trouble, his daddy D-Ray taught him the art of mountain dancing, a frenzied version of tap dancing to wild country banjo music. After his father's death, crazy Jesco dons his father's tap shoes and takes his show on the road.

In 1931, the Bondurant brothers of Franklin County, Virginia, run a multipurpose backwoods establishment that hides their true business — bootlegging. Middle brother Forrest is the brain of the operation; older Howard is the brawn, and younger Jack, the lookout. Though the local police have taken bribes and left the brothers alone, a violent war erupts when a sadistic lawman from Chicago arrives and tries to shut down the Bondurants operation.

Bob Childress was the founder and builder of the famous "Rock Churches" of southwest Virginia, all established between 1919 and 1954. In 2022, Buford Jessup and his family set out to visit all seven of his great uncle's churches.

Set in West Virginia during the 2014 Elk River chemical spill, a first-generation college student clashes with her family while investigating a bizarre issue with their water supply.

Meadow Bridge is a coming-of-age story that follows Darcy, a fourteen-year-old girl growing up in a small West Virginia town in the late 1990s. It's a story about growing up on the edge of poverty and possibility - about trying to reach out into the bigger world, while wrestling with where you're from.

Southern Gothic tale of a coal miner pushed to his limits for the love of his son.

Stalwart Appalachian woman finds romance as she struggles to better herself and her people amid prejudice and familial abuse.

A determined housewife goes head-to-head with a $1 billion mining company after its negligent operation ruins her town's water supply.

After spending two decades in England, Bill Bryson returns to the U.S., where he decides the best way to connect with his homeland is to hike the Appalachian Trail with one of his oldest friends.

After a tragic accident, six friends reunite for a caving expedition. Their adventure soon goes horribly wrong when a collapse traps them deep underground and they find themselves pursued by bloodthirsty creatures. As their friendships deteriorate, they find themselves in a desperate struggle to survive the creatures and each other.

Appalachian Journey is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). It offers songs, dances, stories, and religious rituals of the Southern Appalachians. Preachers, singers, fiddlers, banjo pickers, moonshiners, cloggers, and square dancers recount the good times and the hard times of rural life there. Performers include Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray and Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Workman and Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, and others, with a bonus of a few African-Americans from the North Carolina Piedmont. Narrated by Alan Lomax. The Association for Cultural Equity’s Alan Lomax Archive channel on YouTube additionally streams outtakes from this film: other strong performances by Sheila Kay Adams, Dellie Norton, and Cas Wallin, Lawrence Eller, the Hickses, Algia Mae Hinton and John Dee Holeman, Tommy Jarrell, John “Doodle” Thrower, and Nimrod Workman.

Set in the North Carolina Appalachians, Sprout Wings and Fly honors the fiddle playing of 82-year-old Tommy Jarrell of Toast, NC. Tommy was quirky, gregarious and generous, and this film shows him at his best, in fine fiddling form.

In 1967 Canadian filmmaker Hugh O'Connor came with a crew to eastern Kentucky to make a film showing people from all walks of life in the United States. They finished the day by filming coal miners and their families in rental houses. As the filmmakers were leaving, Hobart Ison, the owner of the property, drove up and fired three shots, killing Hugh O'Connor. Elizabeth Barrett, from Kentucky herself, explores why this happened by trying to understand the people and culture of eastern Kentucky.

A film about America’s first serial killers. These brothers terrorized Kentucky and went across the state on a killing spree. The film is loosely based on the true story of the brothers. Filmed in historically accurate locations.

A father survives a plane crash in rural Appalachia, but becomes suspicious of the elderly couple who take him in to nurse him back to health with the ancient remedies.

Documentary profiling an Appalachian farming family struggling to scrape out a living. Link­ing education and economic development, The Children Must Learn suggests that better schooling, especially in agricultural techniques, would bring improvement.