MOUNTAIN TALK
A film by Neal Hutchison
Thursday Sept 16 2010 at 7pm

“Mountain Talk” by Neal Hutcheson will be the September documentary presented by Seven Sisters Cinema at White Horse Black Mountain in Black Mountain. The film will screen at 7PM on September 16th. Tickets are only $5 for adults and $3 for students.

“Mountain Talk” takes a look at the language patterns that are peculiar to the White descendants of the Scotch-Irish immigrants that settled in the southwestern Appalachian Mountains. Through stories, songs and interviews, the residents of western North Carolina talk of the old days, tracing the origins of a unique quasi-Chaucerian dialect that is rapidly disappearing in the blender of 24/7 media.

Featuring master storytellers such as Gary Carden, Orville Hicks and Mary Jane Queen, the film introduces us to Popcorn Sutton, the poster-boy of the Appalachian moonshine set, who recently killed himself rather than face a term in Federal prison.

Jeff Eason of The Mountain Times, calls “Mountain Talk, “an eye-opening documentary, an enlightening way to spend an hour with some of the true mountain folk of our region.”

This is the first film in what has become Hutcheson’s trilogy about Popcorn Sutton.  In “The Last Run,” Hutcheson focused exclusively on Sutton as he made what he swore was his “last run” of moonshine. (It wasn’t.) Hutcheson who has won numerous awards for his filmmaking is completing the film that will sum up Sutton’s career as well as documenting his increasing media savvy.

Seven Sisters Cinema  is a monthly documentary film series at White Horse Black Mountain, the popular new music venue in the town of the same name. Shown on a giant screen with full sound, the series  features films about the Appalachian experience and/or by Appalachian filmmakers. Serpent Child Ensemble is a local non-profit arts organization that produced the highly popular “way Back When” play series at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts. They are currently creating their own documentary about the Beacon Blanket Mill in Swannanoa and the community that grew up around it.

Mountain Talk was created by the North Carolina Language and Life Project under the auspices of the North Carolina State University Humanities Extension Department in Raleigh. Neal Hutcheson directed and produced the hour-long film and it was released with a companion CD titled An Unclouded Day: Stories and Songs of the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

For more information contact Seven Sisters Cinema at 686-3922 or the White Horse Black Mountain at 669-0816

ABOUT THE FILMMAKER:

Paul Bonesteel officially began his career in 1985 with N.C. Public Television while in college, graduating from North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

Paul traveled to the Soviet Union to direct, If The People Will Lead, captured a biography of a folk singer in Travels With Claude, rafted through Alaskan wilderness to shoot Caribou Bones, and revealed a complex photographer in the midst of the Olympic Games in Dreams and Despair.
Paul Bonesteel has produced and directed nine full-length documentary films with most airing on PBS. His most recent works include, the award-winning The Great American Quilt Revival (2005), The Mystery of George Masa (2002) Folkmoot USA (2003) and the documentary short 'Pier' screening in the 2009 Asheville Film Festival.
Bonesteel Films is now five years into production on a PBS bound documentary on the iconic American writer Carl Sandburg, with the expectation for completion in 2010.