Ken Hechler with Mimi Pickering at the January 2006 showing of her two films about The Buffalo Creek Disaster

Mimi Pickering is one of the oldest working members of Appalshop, Appalachia’s official media center, located in Whitesburg, Ky.  During the last three decades she has made many films including several about West Virginia, most notably two films about the Buffalo Creek Disaster- “The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man”(1975) and “Buffalo Creek Revisited”(1985). She also made a great biography of Bluefield native Hazel Dickens called “Hazel Dickens - It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song” and the very important “Chemical Valley” (1991) about the connection between the Bhopal Disaster and the Kanawha Valley sister MIC plant at Institute. All four of these films are now available on DVD from Appalshop. In an essay about films about coal mining, I chose her Buffalo Creek films as the most important of all of the hundreds of films I have seen about coal mining that I have seen since I came to WV in 1978.

I have been showing Mimi’s films for thirty years myself, most notably previewing her “Chemical Valley” at the WV Library Association conference in Charleston one year. A Union Carbide person was present, challenging the film scene by scene. It took me until a few years ago to finally show the film in South Charleston at the Museum with Mimi present to introduce the film. We also showed her Hazel Dickens film. Many people from the local group, “People Concerned about MIC” were present.

The Appalshop website lists 11 films that Mimi has worked on in some fashion for Appalshop. Her earliest WV film, “Struggle of Coon Branch Mountain”(1972) apparently is NOT available on DVD yet.

Check out her many other films, especially her film “Dreadful Memories  - The Life of Sarah Ogan Gunning.” It is one of the most touching films about a musician I have ever seent. It would be nice to show the Gunning film with the Dickens film, back to back, to show how important music can be in the mountains.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at and is filed under Uncategorized, Blogroll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.