Revolutionary Hearts – 2023

Showtimes:
Wednesday, April 12, 3:00 PM
Friday, April 14, 3:15 PM

Revolutionary Hearts
Directors: Mary E Lutz, Peter Kinoy, Documentary, USA, 57 min
The story of David and Janet Greene, a working-class couple who lead an extraordinary life. From the coal fields of West Virginia to adult literacy classes in Harlem, New York, to the rust belt of central Ohio, David and Janet Greene have built formal and informal freedom schools for liberation. But 50 years of industrial labor and bad working conditions in coal mines and auto plants leave David with four different life-threatening cancers. Weakened by the disease and its treatments he takes up art and begins painting the story of his life. These paintings not only form a visual core of the film but David and Janet use the paintings to do what they have always done – teaching and learning with those around them to build a collective knowledge for liberation. Revolutionary Hearts may not have all the answers, but it warmly invites the viewer into the conversation.

Plays with:

The Art of Finding Home
Directors: Phoebe Wagoner, Julian Holt, Justin Byrant, Patrick Stewart, Documentary, USA, 12 min
The experience of artmaking in Appalachia is a complex one. An Appalachian identity often creates a distinctive and strong relationship between person and homeplace, but artists are told they need to leave the region in order to learn and innovate. Being told to leave home and to escape tradition is a hard thing to reckon with, both as a person and an artist. When the artists we interviewed left home, their connection with a homeplace was what inspired them creatively much more than the urban, non-Appalachian communities they joined. As young artists in Appalachia, we wanted to learn from their innovations and their experiences of coming home in “The Art of Finding Home.”

Wiley’s Last Resort
Directors: Evan Mascagni, Shawn Lind, Documentary, USA, 17 min
With coal mining destroying the mountains that he loves, Jim Webb establishes Wiley’s Last Resort as a place for local activists, musicians, artists, and dreamers to celebrate Appalachian culture and help fight back against strip mining.

No Such Right: The End of Roe in Appalachia
Directors: Tate Greene, Rebekah McAuley, Sarah Sexton, Deladis Haywood, Documentary, USA, 19 min
A snapshot of a region in crisis. In the aftermath of the stunning Dobbs v Jackson decision, doctors, lawyers, activists, and young people across Appalachia had to come to terms with what the future of their region and their rights would be.