The Rural Routes Film Festival in NYC has been showing many great films made in West Virginia since it was founded in 2003, giving top awards to “Dental Farmer,” Mimi Pickering’s film on Hazel Dickens, “It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song,”(which premiered in WV at the Sutton WV Filmmakers Film Festival)  and other films. Unfortunately, some of WV’s best filmmakers like Ray Schmitt have had their world-class films rejected by the festival. This year they screened several films from the Appalshop archives including the 1975 film “Nimrod Workman - To Fit My Own Catagory,” which is about a musician/coal miner/activist who spent most of his life in WV.

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Larry Gibson along with Judy Bonds, Maria Gunnoe, Vivian Stockman, Allen Johnson, and many others have been fighting for their land for a long time. Gibson has recently been profiled by B.J. Gudmundsson in “Keeper of the Mountains.” ( Citizens Community Television in Louisville, Colorado, aired “Mountain Mourning” on July 22. The entire Sunday schedule was devoted to the Collection which was shown 7 times.)

Now you will be able to see him profiled on CNN’s Heroes series.
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Robert Tinnell, a native of Marion County, presently a resident of Morgantown, was mentioned in a USA Today review of  several new graphic novels. His story,”Midnight Caller, “is included in a book called “Postcards: True Stories that Never Happened.” You can read the short review here - http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2007-08-08-roundup-graphic-novels_N.htm

Here is a recent interview with Tinnell on FanBoy Radio - “Inside Insight Studio Group,” http://www.fanboyradio.com/.