Haw River Films

MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL

See and Hear Al Gore ,Ed WIley and director Mike OConnell at the 2008 Nashville Film Festival awards ceremony

View the Mountain Top Removal documentary trailer

News and Observer coverage of the bills introduction

The Indiegrits Film Festival, Columbia South Carolina Second place winner for best feature, True Grit Runner up award.

Charlotte Film Festival, Charlotte North Carolina Best Documentary 2007, Indie Spirit award winner

Bluegrass Independent Film Festival, Lagrange Kentucky

Boston Film Festival, Boston Massachusetts

Planet In Focus Environmental Film Festival, Toronto Canada

Ava Gardner Film festival, Smithfield North Carolina

Cucalorus Film Festival, Wilmington North Carolina

Mion Solutions Environmental Film Awards First Place Best Environmental Film. Award includes filmmakers choice for non profit cash award. Haw River Films donates to Coal River Mountain Watch and the Finger Lakes Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance.

Wild and Scenic Film Festival, Nevada City California Jan 11- 13 2008 Jury Award winner Jan 13 2008

Louisville Film Society screening, Louisville Kentucky Jan 31 2008 www.louisvillefilm.org

International Festival of Mountain Film Ljublajna Slovenia February 13 through 16 2008 (Podiranje vrhov/Mountain Top Removal ) www.imffd.com

Cleveland International Film Festival March 6 - 16 2008 Mountain Top Removal scheduled for March 10 @6:45pm followed by a forum and March 11 @4:30pm www.clevelandfilm.org

Mountain Top Removal screening in Harrisonburg Virginia March 11 7:30pm At the historic Court Square Theater. Followed by Q&A with Ed Wiley and director Michael O'Connell

March 20 7 pm "Final Cut" community screening in Pittsboro NC. Central Carolina Community College Pittsboro Campus Admission is 5 dollars proceeds benefit the Pennies of Promise Campaign.

Appalachian Studies Conference Huntington WV Marshall University March 29

Vail Film Festival April 3-6 Vail Colorado Festival Website

Cackalacky Film Festival, Charlotte North Carolina April 19 1:30 pm 2008 2635 Southern Pines Blvd Charlotte NC Festival Website

Appalachian Film Festival Huntington West Virginia April 17 through 19 2008 Screening Thursday April 17 @2pm Mountain Top Removal receives 2nd place for Best Documentary On April 19 2008 Appalachian Film Festival

New York Premier April 22 Earth Day at the Lincoln Center New York City Lincoln Center screening information

Nashville Film Festival April 17 through 24 2008. Screening on April 23 @ 6:45pm Mountain Top Removal wins the Reel Current award. Selected and presented by Al Gore Nashville Film Festival

Athens International Film Festival Screening Sat April 26 5pm Stuart Opera House Athens Ohio April 25 through May 2 2008 Festival website

May 15 Fine Arts Theater Asheville North Carolina. Proceeds benefit Southwings, aviation conservation organization

May 22 through May 27 2008 Green Film Festival Seoul South Korea Mountain Top Removal selected for competition in best feature category Festival Website

July 10 530 pm Nashville TN Kathy Mattea sponsored screening at the Basement Nightclub, Admisson is free. The Basement

Mon July 21 7pm Lexington Kentucky Engineering Earth Conference, Hilton Green Suites Hotel Sponsored by Dr Stan Brunn University of Kentucky Geography Department. Free Admission Engineering Earth conference website

Woods Hole Film Festival Woods Hole Massachusetts Thursday July 31 5pm Best Documentary Feature Audience Award Winner Woods Hole Film Festival

Coastal Conservation League, Charleston South Carolina September 18 2008, Terrace Theater, Screening is part of the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival sponsored by Patagonia

University of Notre Dame National Energy Conference Sept 25 2008

Western Kentucky University October 15 2008 Director Michael O'Connell in attendance for Q & A after screening

October 16 2008 Columbia College Chicago Illinois Film Row Cinema, 8th floor, 1104 S. Wabash Ave, 6:30 p.m. Director Michael O'Connell in attendance for Q&A after the screening. Sponsored by Top Less America film project.

April 2 2009 Lexington Kentucky University of Kentucky screening and Q& A with director Michael C O'Connell. Screening sponsored by University of Kentucky English Department.

April 10 2009   8pm Ackland Art Museum  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Director Michael O'Connell in attendance for Q& A

International Festival of Nature and the Environment April 23 through April 26 Grenoble France. www.frapna.com

May 1 through May 9 2009 Bam Cultural Festival Tehran, Iran  www.bamfestival.org

Bonnaroo June 11  6 pm Cinema tent with Ben Sollee and Maria Gunnoe Sponsored by Rock The Earth Green Screens touring series Bonnaroo Screening link

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Mountain Top Removal wins Best Documentary Feature Audience Award at Woods Hole Film Festival Aug 1 2008

Mountain Top Removal selected for 2008 Indie Arts Award by the Independent weekly in Durham North Carolina

ABC News: Coal Boss: If You Take Photos, 'You're Liable to Get Shot' http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4582452&amp...

From the Nashville Film Festival

"Most of the nation's electricity comes from coal. More than one-third of this is produced in Appalachia, and West Virginia produces the most coal in that region. One of these mines is located less than 400 yards up a hill from Marsh Fork Elementary, where defenseless children are exposed to toxic elements that contribute to Alzheimer's, kidney failure, asthma, and common colds that just never go away. Fifth-grader Kayla, her spirited grandfather Ed Wiley and an impassioned crowd of supporters initiate a campaign to raise money to build a new school, but Governor Joe Manchin makes no promises. While Ed walks from Charleston to Washington D.C. raising awareness and funds, we meet other West Virginia residents whose homes, health and environment are being destroyed by mountain top removal coal mining. Maria Gunnoe's property has flooded 7 times in 5 years, and Carmilita Brown has had black water coming from her tap for twenty years - all due to the mining of the Coal River valley. These gripping personal accounts are complemented by revealing interviews from conservation groups, physicians, scientists, and coal field activists. Both engrossing and alarming, Mountain Top Removal not only changes the way we see a mountain landscape, but it also connects us to the people living next to coal slurry ponds , a by-product of our ever-increasing need for electricity." Kristine Lyons

From the Cucalorus Website www.cucalorus.org

"At times, it seems news of environmental and ecological exploitations of other nations is at the forefront of our awareness. What's happening in our own country, our own backyard, is neglected or ignored. Director Mike O'Connell, though, points a sharp lens at the harsh coal-mining practice called mountaintop removal, a process that involves clear cutting and then the removal of up to 1,000 vertical feet of mountain by explosives.

With breathtaking helicopter footage of the Appalachian Mountains, O'Connell effectively captures the personality of the landscape and its culture. He is there when citizens, students and evangelical environmentalists confront the nation's fourth largest coal company. As Southern Appalachia's mountains are leveled to access coal seams for cheap electricity the communities standing in their way don't have a chance. Or do they?"

Larry Gibson with protestors May 2005

Maria Gunnoe at her home in Bobwhite WV

Ed Wiley crosses the Potomac River into Washington DC

A mountain top removal mine site

Photo by Vivian Stockman

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Kayford Mountain MTR site

Larry Gibson at Stover Cemetary

Marpat Aviation Pilot Joe Altizer Photo by Antrim Caskey

Michael O'Connell's Mountain Top Removal raised awareness of coal mining practices
16 JUL 2008 • by Matt Saldaña

When Al Gore presented Pittsboro, N.C., filmmaker Michael O'Connell with the award for best documentary at this year's Nashville Film Festival, he didn't just rattle off a prepared speech and smile for the photo-op. The former vice president, once berated for his lack of visible emotion, nearly choked up onstage as he recalled the plight of Ed Wiley, the protagonist in Mountain Top Removal, O'Connell's film about a devastating method of coal mining in Southern Appalachia.



Click for larger image • Filmmaker Michael O'Connell at his home in Pittsboro
Photo by Jeremy M. Lange

"I was telling Ed that his campaign to get a new school, because of the terrible impact of mountaintop removal, is really part and parcel of the same kind of struggle that I and others have been involved in, to try to get a solution to the global climate crisis," Gore said, before inviting Wiley onstage. "It's the same fight, really."

He added: "You can tell I feel strongly about this, and have for a long time, but the feelings I'm expressing here were really evoked, in a significant way, by this film."

Mountain Top Removal focuses largely on the story of Wiley, who walks from West Virginia to Washington, D.C., to demand that his granddaughter's school be moved from its precarious position directly beneath a mountaintop removal site in Marsh Fork, W. Va. The town's elementary school sits a few hundred yards under an artificial lake containing 2.8 billion gallons of "coal slurry," the toxic by-product released after dynamiting mountain peaks and separating coal from the core. (An industry spokesman in the film describes slurry as "nothing more than dirt and rock," though samples contain toxic levels of arsenic, lead and mercury. Massey Energy—the company that owns the Marsh Fork mine—agreed in 2008 to a $20 million settlement for more than 4,500 violations of the Clean Water Act.)

O'Connell spent 15 months, with no crew and—with the exception of roughly $11,500 in contributions—a self-funded budget, documenting the lives of West Virginians who have stood up against a well-entrenched coal industry. The director, who grew up in suburban Virginia and began his entertainment career mixing sound at a prominent D.C. jazz club, moved to North Carolina nearly 20 years ago to become a soundman for UNC-TV, where he now edits film. He took his technical experience, coupled with a childhood fondness for nature and a passion for civil rights, to the mountains of West Virginia in 2005.

"I just showed up as a journalist and started looking around. I met these people, saw what they were doing, and it unfolded very naturally," he says in an interview with the Indy.

His most important discovery, perhaps, was Wiley, whose indignation pours through the movie frames.

"I just went with my intuition," O'Connell says. "It wasn't a lot of, 'Oh, well this guy's not going to work or that guy's not going to work.' It was, 'Holy smokes, look at these people. Look what's going on here.' When Ed said, 'I'm going to walk to D.C.,' I was struggling with which direction to take—legal, environmental, people, humanities, the school. When he said that, I got off the phone, and turned to my wife and said, 'He just solved our problem.'"

After garnering public support on his walk to D.C., Wiley and other activists returned to West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin's office to demand action, and O'Connell filmed a six-hour standoff that ended with police officers dragging off protesters, including a defiant 90-year-old woman who says, "I'm ready to die. Are you?"

In an interview from his home in West Virginia, Wiley says he didn't harp on the dramatic action of Mountain Top Removal, though he says every time he watched the film he was "moved."

"You just got to let it pass you. You can't sit there and put yourself up on a pedestal and think you're going to shine, because you're not. You've got to keep moving forward. You've got to get it done."

He adds: "The story, with the children—people care about the environment, people really love the environment, but when you're trying to save these kids' lives and they're breathing chemicals and in danger every single day, it's a different kind of worry. You want it to end."

Wiley says he opened up to O'Connell, not surprisingly, because he trusted the filmmaker's dedication to the project.

"Mike put a lot of time in it," he says. "I'm not sure what his budget was, but I know it was real low, compared to what some people had. ... He stuck it out. He put his heart in it, and I've seen that. He cares."

Independent film producer Gill Holland, who signed on as an executive producer after seeing an early cut of Mountain Top Removal, describes the film as a "tragically good story."

"He did it right," Holland says of O'Connell, in an interview. "He green-lit himself and saved money by doing everything. And since he is a quintessentially talented filmmaker, it was successful."

Country musician Kathy Mattea, a West Virginia native whose latest album, Coal, explores the history of coal mining in her home state, met O'Connell and watched the film at the Nashville Film Festival. She hosted a second screening in Nashville recently.

"I was inspired by his getting into the story and trying to help give voice to the people who are living through this," she says in an interview from her home in Nashville.

"It's so hidden, and so remote, that it's very easy to be overlooked," she says. "That's the power of this film. That gives me a lot of hope. I really think that what's going on in the coal fields is going to play out into the civil rights movement of my time."

Mattea says she was "touched" that someone who grew up near D.C. and lived in North Carolina would choose to document coal towns in West Virginia. But already, the film has had a national impact. In addition to the award presented by Gore, Mountain Top Removal has earned top prizes at film festivals in North Carolina and California. In May, N.C. Rep. Pricey Harrison, motivated in part by O'Connell's documentary, introduced legislation that would make it illegal for North Carolina power plants to burn coal derived from mountaintop removal.

"The fact that we're the second-largest consumers of that coal will make the legislation an uphill battle," Harrison says in an interview. "But I think having Mike's documentary, and other media attention on the issue, might get people a little more sensitive to the issue of where their energy comes from. Right now you feel kind of removed from it. But once you see the documentary, you realize, wow, I'm running my air-conditioning at 68 and ... these communities are being destroyed in West Virginia."

Thirty Tigers Press release for Kathy Mattea Screening
June 25 2008
KATHY MATTEA HOSTS
MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL SCREENING

Nashville, TN- Musician and activist Kathy Mattea will serve as host for a
showing of Michael O'Connell's award-winning film, Mountain Top Removal, Thursday, July 10th at 5:30pm at The Basement in Nashville. Mattea recently
viewed the film at the Nashville Film Festival and was moved by the scenes of environmental destruction wrought in her native West Virginia by the coal
mining technique called mountain top removal. Says Mattea, "You must see
this to believe it. I am saddened that we've progressed to a point where we think this is an acceptable practice. Michael O'Connell's film gives voice to those that have no multi-million dollar PR firm to tell their
story. The visuals are gut-wrenching--there are no words to describe the devastation."

The film recently won the 2008 Reel Current Award from former Vice-President
Al Gore, this years Nobel Peace Prize Winner and the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. The award was presented
to OConnell at the 2008 Nashville Film Festival, where the film was shown to a capacity crowd. In addition to that prestigious honor, the film has
also won First Prize at the Charlotte Film Festival, First Prize at the Mion Solutions Environmental Film Awards, and the Jury Award at the Wild and Scenic Film Festival.

"It's a story of personal determination and courage," Gore told an assembled audience of festival attendees and media members. "It's also a story about the terrible impact on families in the communities that are victimized by
the way in which the coal is being removed from the tops of mountains in Appalachia. This film really brings out the human dimensions of this because you see it through the eyes of a family that's greatly affected and you feel
it in the emotions of a small town that has really been hurt a lot."

Mattea's recent album,COAL, serves as a meditation on her family roots in the coal country of West Virginia. Recorded as a tribute to my place and my people,; the album features her take on classic mining songs from Hazel Dickens, Jean Ritchie, Merle Travis and others to paint a nuanced portrait, exploring the tragedy that often comes from life in the mines while paying respects to the strength and humility that provides a bedrock foundation to
the community. She will be introducing the movie and speaking briefly about the impact of mountain top removal that she has witnessed firsthand.

Filmmaker O'Connell will also be in attendance and will be answering questions after the film.

The Basement is located at 1604 8th Ave. South in Nashville. Go to
www.thebasementnashville.com <http://www.thebasementnashville.com> for
directions.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information contact Traci Thomas @ Thirty Tigers 615-664-1167 or
traci@thirtytigers.com

*****

NASHVILLE, Tennesee -- April 19, 2008 -- Al Gore, former Vice-President, Nobel Peace Prize Winner and the subject of the Academy Award winning documentary AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, presented the 2008 REEL CURRENT AWARD yesterday to MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL, Michael O'Connell's revealing look at mountaintop removal mining in West Virginia. The presentation took place at the Regal Green Hills Cinemas in the Green Hills section of the city where the Festival is taking place.

"It's a story of personal determination and courage," he told an assembled audience of festival goers and members of the media. "It's also a story about the terrible impact on families in the communities that are victimized by the way in which the coal is being removed from the tops of mountains in Appalachia. This film really brings out the human dimensions of this because you see it through the eyes of a family that's greatly affected and you feel it in the emotions of a small town that has really been hurt a lot."

Gore was particularly taken with two of the subjects of the film, Ed Wiley and his granddaughter Kayla Taylor, who joined O'Connell and the film's producers Gill Holland and Augusta Brown Holland at the presentation.

"(Mountain top removal mining) kills the prospect for Kayla and her generation to have the same kind of beautiful place to live and the same healthy place to live, and all for what?" he asked. "Because the amount of money being made by this, it goes up to the top of the income ladder. Now, there are a lot of jobs associated with it, but when it's gone, those jobs are gone, too. It's mostly done by these big machines now anyway, and the people are not benefiting economically, and they're certainly being hurt in terms of their health and their whole outlook, and the one thing different I like about this particular film is that it really does allow the audience to connect with the emotions of these different families as they go through this."

Gore added that Wiley's struggle in the film to get a new school for his granddaughter "is really part and parcel of the same type of struggle that I and many others have been involved in trying to get solutions to the climate crisis.

"It's the same fight really, because today, all around the world, we will collectively put another 70 million tons of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere, and the majority of it comes from burning coal without any thought to the consequences for future generations, or any thought of the consequences for us now."

MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL screens at the Festival on Wednesday, April 23 at 6:45 and again on Thursday, April 24 at 4:00 p.m. The film is also screening as part of an Earth Day celebration at Lincoln Center in New York City on Sunday, April 20.

The REEL CURRENT Award winner is chosen and presented each year by Al Gore to a documentary at NaFF that provides extraordinary insight into a contemporary global issue. Last year's winner was Jennifer Baichwal's MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES.

Filming efforts to save the Appalachians in Mountain Top Removal
Misty mountain hopes
19 MAR 2008 &#8226; by Neil Morris



Landscape without mountain, a common sight in the Appalachians.
Photo courtesy of Haw River Films
Mike O'Connell's introduction to coal mining culture came at an early age and in a most inauspicious way.

"Growing up in Reston, Va., my family and I would often travel on the weekends to West Virginia," remembers O'Connell. "When I was about 8 years old, we were visiting the Capon Bridge area, and I remember hearing people discussing how a person's house had been dynamited to make way for a coal mine. That story always stayed with me."

When O'Connell, now a burgeoning filmmaker, began looking for a new project several years ago, he recalled both that incident and news accounts about an insidious new form coal mining known as mountain top removal (MTR). O'Connell's research eventually led to him to the Mountain Justice Summer activist group and, eventually, West Virginia's Coal River valley. There, over the course of two years, O'Connell filmed the beleaguered citizens who comprise the core of his documentary, Mountain Top Removal, which will be screened Thursday, March 20, at the Central Carolina Community College (CCCC) campus in Pittsboro.

Among those featured are a man fighting to force the state to build a new elementary school away from a nearby coal-slurry pond ("None of the teachers' children attend the school," observes O'Connell), a woman living on land she cannot sell because the well water is polluted, and a town trying to preserve its history and geography against an encroaching MTR mine.

"Being around those people was so inspiring," says O'Connell. "They are fighting for their lives and homes against this destructive form of mining. I have been to former strip mining sites that are over 50 years old, and trees will grow back there. However, [MTR] actually changes the geology of the area and cuts off the tops of mountain peaks. Those do not grow back."

Although MTRs date back to the 1970s, O'Connell says recent policies and administrative rulings have caused a proliferation of the practice during the past eight years. "When I was filming in West Virginia, the feeling I got was that the pace of MTR was rapidly increasing, almost as if the coal companies were trying to get what they could while the [Bush] administration is in office."

An incident last month illustrates this point. Mountain Top Removal was invited to screen at a film festival in Ljublajna, Slovenia. However, upon landing in Slovenia, O'Connell learned that U.S. officials, apparently after taking a closer look at his film's content, had attempted to withdraw a government travel grant before festival organizers intervened on his behalf.

O'Connell got his early audio/ video training decades ago in Washington, D.C., while working at "Blue Alley," a venerable dinner and jazz nightclub in Georgetown. "Back then, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and Sarah Vaughn would play there, and they usually didn't bring their own light-and-sound crew, so I got to work up-close with all these greats."

After moving to Pittsboro in 1990, O'Connell spent 15 years working as a staff photographer for UNC-TV before venturing into independent filmmaking. His first project, GrassRoots Stages, spent a brief run on PBS.

Since the film's first screening (also at CCCC, where he paid $300 to rent the facility), O'Connell has shown his film worldwide, most recently at the Cleveland International Film Festival. It won the award for Best Documentary at last year's Charlotte Film Festival, and it has been nominated for a Reel Current Award at next month's Nashville Film Festival, where the winner will be selected and presented by Al Gore.

The final cut of the film now includes a narration by actor William Mapother (Lost; In The Bedroom). This time, the CCCC screening will carry a $5 ticket price will benefit the effort to build the new elementary school in West Virginia. "And," quips O'Connell, "I don't have to pay rent this time."

For more information, go to www.hawriverfilms.com.

Film Clips | Judith Egerton
Documentary director shines light on coal mining industry

By Judith Egerton &#8226; jegerton@courier-journal.com &#8226; January 28, 2008


If you think coal-mining has nothing to do with you, think again.


All of us who consume water and use electricity have a direct relationship with the miners and the companies that produce coal.

Cinematographer and director Michael Cusack O'Connell of Pittsboro, N.C., has made a documentary that makes the connection indisputably vivid. He'll be in Louisville Thursday night to show his film and talk about it.

"Mountain Top Removal," a fundraising presentation by and for the nonprofit Louisville Film Society, examines the costs and consequences of mountaintop removal mining on the people, mountains and culture of southern Appalachia.

The 74-minute documentary will be screened at 6 p.m. at the Clifton Center, 2117 Payne St. Admission is $10.

Shot over two years, the film follows citizens and conservation groups as they oppose the coal industry's methods and the toxic waste produced in the process of stripping the Appalachian mountaintops.

The film features Jeff Goodell, author of the best-seller "Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith," about the nine trapped Quecreek miners, as well as conservationists, geologists, West Virginia Coal Association President Bill Raney, President George W. Bush, West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and others.

O'Connell is a two-time Emmy Award winner for his cinematography work on "Watch Me Play," a history of women's professional basketball, and "AMA-Zone," a children's program about the Amazon rain forest.

"Mountain Top Removal" won the best documentary award at last year's Charlotte (N.C.) Film Festival and the Jury Prize at The Wild and Scenic Film Festival in Nevada City, Calif., considered the world's largest environmental film festival. The executive producers of the documentary were Augusta and Gill Holland of Louisville.

On the Web: www.louisvillefilm.org.