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Appalachia is a national treasure. It is a region stretching from New York to Alabama, comprising the oldest mountains in North America. It is home to the most ancient forest in the world and one of the greatest collections of mineral wealth on the planet. From the early sixteenth century when the region's name first entered the historical record, Appalachia has been a place of mystery and mythology. It has been romanticized, maligned, discovered, rediscovered, exploited, redefined, but only vaguely understood. In fact, more is known about Appalachia that is untrue than about any other region of the country.
APPALACHIA will be the first film series ever to chronicle the riveting history of one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth and the diverse peoples who have inhabited them. The style as well as the content of the series will be unique. The film will weave the insights of science, the arts and the humanities into a spellbinding portrait of one of the world’s great ecological treasures. The central character of the series will be the Appalachian mountains themselves. The central theme will be the story of how the mountains have shaped the people and how people have shaped the mountains — the dynamic interaction of natural history and human history.
Appalachia is unlike any other region in America. Nowhere else in America is the ancient history of the earth so openly revealed as in these mountains. Nowhere else does such a distinct culture, formed in relative isolation from the rest of America, still exist. And nowhere else in America is the story of man’s interaction with nature so dramatically evident. In Appalachia the complexity of the geology is echoed in the complexity of the culture.
At the same time, Appalachia is quintessentially American. As we trace the history of the region over the centuries, we view a distillation of the American experience. Here in Appalachia, the tensions between private ownership and public good have been played out over and over. Here in our first frontier we see the beginnings of the debate of who we are as a people and what our relationship is to this place we inhabit.
The story begins with the birth of the mountains during what the writer John McPhee has termed “Deep Time.” It chronicles the spectacular geologic upheavals which created an immense treasure of minerals carpeted by the richest temperate forest in the world. The story continues with those who came seeking the treasures of the land — from the first nomads ten thousand years ago to today’s hikers on the Applachian Trail.
APPALACHIA is the story of the Shawnee, the Creek and the Cherokee; the story of the first Spanish explorers as well as the early settlers: German, French, Scotch-Irish and African. APPALACHIA is the story of Revolutionary War heroes and Civil War atrocities, of blood feuds and union campaigns, of settlement schools and poverty wars, of bluegrass music and old-time religion, of family farms and absentee landlords, of environmental destruction and national park creation. It is the story of larger than life characters such as Daniel Boone, Attacullaculla, William Bartram, Stonewall Jackson, Booker T. Washington, Mother Jones, Thomas Wolfe and Doc Watson.
APPALACHIA will be told by outstanding writers, singers and storytellers as diverse as North Carolina novelist, Robert Morgan, Harvard psychiatrist, Robert Coles, and country music star, Dolly Parton, as well as by the ordinary folk who have made the towns, valleys, coves and peaks of Appalachia their home for generations. Academy Award-nominated film director, Ross Spears, a life-long resident of Appalachia, will produce and direct the series. Writer Jamie Ross will co-produce. Renowned composer Kenton Coe will create the original musical score. A team of the nation’s outstanding historians, writers, scientists, musicologists and folklorists will provide expert consultation.
APPALACHIA will relate the epic tale of a vast mountain domain and will recount the adventures, the challenges, the tragedies and triumphs of the many peoples who entered these mountains and forged a way of life quintessentially American. Above all, APPALACHIA will provide a window onto the defining question of our age: how to use the land to provide for the needs of today and at the same time preserve it for the future. The story of Appalachia is the story of our struggle as a people to find our true and proper relationship to the natural world.
A Production of the James Agee Film Project, a non-profit corporation. Copyright 2001.
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