Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story – 2014

Posted on Posted in Guest Artists 2014

Co-director Beth Stephens will introduce and discuss the film.
Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story
Director: Beth Stephens with Annie Sprinkle
USA, Not rated, 70 min.
Showing Tuesday, April 15, 2014 9:15 PM

Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story is an autobiographical documentary depicting the “pollen-amorous” love affair between artist couple Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, and the biodiverse Appalachian Mountains. This documentary follows Stephens and Sprinkle on a journey home to Beth’s native West Virginia, to talk to rural community members, environmental activists, family and friends in order to speak out against mountain top removal (MTR) mining practices, which are destroying the forests, towns, and people they love. Told first-person through interviews and ecosexual actions that connect them to the earth, Goodbye Mountain, braids together three main themes –the joys of ecosexuality, the destruction of MTR, and Beth’s upbringing in the heart of a West Virginia coal mining family – to address issues of environmental and social justice in the most poverty-stricken regions of the USA. Their goal is to begin mobilizing the gay, lesbian, bi, trans, inter-and eventually eco to stand up against environmental injustice everywhere. As Beth says in the film, “Gays and Lesbians can live without getting married, but they won’t survive unless they have drinking water and clean air to breath.”
Stephens and Sprinkle, two ecosexuals in love, raise performance art hell in West Virginia to help save the region from mountaintop removal destruction. This film, chronicles their love, activism, and struggle to save their family home, climaxing with their wedding to the Appalachian Mountains. Shot in part in Athens, Ohio, when Stephens and Sprinkle performed their Purple Wedding to the Mountains in 2010.

This screening and presentation is sponsored in part by the School of Art and Design, College of Fine Arts, Ohio University

In memory of Larry Gibson, Keeper of the Mountains.