The Town that Was…Centralia, PA.
Jason Brown, visiting from Greensboro, brought by a copy of “The Town that Was, “a new documentary about Centralia, Pa., the town that started on fire. Friends of his made the 71 minute film that truly showed what it was like to lose your hometown to a sudden disaster.
I enjoyed the film, but think that it should have been edited down to about 25 minutes. Basically the film interviews the youngest person who still lives in the once thriving coal town, showing him painting the last town bench, turning on the Christmas lights, basically living in a ghost town.
An old friend of mine from Pa, Tony Buba, made some pretty interesting feature documentaries, and shorts, about his family and friends in Braddock, Pa. I think that even his feature, “Lightning Over Braddock” was a stretch. Like my friend Les Blank often does, making a short film, or even a 55 minute film, can convey pretty much any story.
While watching the film I had to think of the people who have been forced out of New Orleans by Katrina, and all of the other disasters that have swept the world recently. I also thought about the victims of the man-made super disaster called “mountaintop removal mining.” As Robert Kennedy Jr. and Kathy Mattea saw with their own eyes recently, West Virginia truly is a land of disaster - not caused by accident as was the fire that started everything in Centralia, or the wrath of nature that Katrina brought….but the effect of millions of pounds of dynamite blowing up vast mountains.
I digress…..I enjoyed this whistful film, and hope that the WV Intl Film Festival and others will show it. I also hope that the filmmakers can edit it down - to maybe 55 minutes, or even 25 minutes. It would make a nice short film to show with one of the many new films on mountaintop removal mining in WV.
