Selected Videos on Appalachian Women

Arranged by title. To locate the video, click on the image or call number.

LRC 225
Coalmining women. 1982.
Summary: Women coal miners tell of the economic conditions that led them to seek employment in the coal mines and problems encountered once hired.

LRC 225
Dollmaker. 1984.
Summary: Jane Fonda won an Emmy for her portrayal of a woman in 1940s rural Kentucky who must keep her family together when they move to Detroit, where her husband has found work. There they must overcome prejudice and tragedy.

LRC 225
Evelyn Williams. 1995.
Summary: Evelyn Williams is a portrait of a woman who is many things: a coal miner's daughter and wife; a domestic worker and mother ofnine; a college student in her 50s and community organizer; an Appalachian African-American. Above all, she is a woman whose awareness of class and race oppression has led her to a lifetime of activism. Now in her 80s, she is battling to save her land in eastern Kentucky from destruction by a large oil and gas firm. With humor, eloquence, and at times anger, Evelyn tells her story.

TX945 .F37 2007
Johnson, Anne Lewis; Appalshop Film & Video and Headwaters (Firm). Fast food women : a film. Whitesburg, KY: Appalshop Film & Video, 1991, 2007.
Summary: Looks at the live of the women who prepare the food at four different fastfood restaurants in eastern Kentucky. These women, mostly middle-aged with children to raise, are often the sole source of income for theirfamilies. They work for salaries barely above minimum wage, have trouble getting full-time hours because of their employer's scheduling policies, and are without benefits. Scenes of women working at the various restaurants are included in this look at the other side of the counter

LRC 225
Harriette Simpson Arnow : 1908-1986. 1988.
Summary: This video introduces readers of The Dollmaker to its author - a feisty, funny, outspoken, talented and hardworking woman. In interviews filmed not long before her death, Ms. Arnow provides the basic biographical details of her life and reveals the difficulties of being a writer, a wife and a mother - roles that she balanced for much of her career. We learn of her experience teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in her native Pulaski County, Kentucky; how she left the mountains looking for work and an opportunity to write; and of the difficulties finding the time and energy to write while raising a family, first on an Appalachian farm and then in wartime Detroit.

ML420 .D53 2001x
Davis, Dee; Pickering, Mimi and Appalshop, Inc. Hazel Dickens : it's hard to tell the singer from the song. Whitesburg, Ky.: Appalshop, 2001.
Summary: Chronicles the life and accomplishments of West Virginia native singer and songwriter Hazel Dickens.

LRC 225
Mabel Parker Hardison Smith. 1985.
Summary: Ms. Smith, of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, is a black Appalachian woman who taught school for over 35 years in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky. Ms. Smith speaks here with eloquence about the history of black migration to the coal camps, and about the joy and knowledge that comes from the effort to live in dignity and inner peace during difficult times.

Feature Film M43458
Wexler, Haskell; Forster, Robert; Bloom, Verna, et al. Medium cool. Hollywood, Calif.: Paramount Pictures, 1994, c1969.
Summary: As protesters and police face off in the streets during the Democratic National Convention of 1968, the relationship deepens between a dispassionate TV news cameraman and a warmhearted Appalachian woman raising her son in a Chicago ghetto.

LRC 225
The Millstone Sewing Center. 1972.
Summary: The Millstone Sewing Center was founded in the Letcher County, Kentucky community by local women Mabel Kiser in an effort to offer alternatives to typical welfare programs. The center employed elderly local seamstresses, gave clothing to the needy, operated a lunch program and served as a community gathering place.

LRC 225
Quilting women. 1976.
Summary: Quilting Women looks at the art of quilting and the countless women who practice it. The vast array of intricate designs is illustrated in huge, eye-catching coverlets. Stills of previous generations of women, quilting in their parlors or on their porches, give way to footage of today's women involved in the steps of quilting from start to finish.

HV1446.W4 L4 2001x
Lewis, Anne; Pence, Ellen; Tucker, Debby; Black Bear, Tillie and Appalshop, Inc. Shelter. Whitesburg, Ky.: Appalshop, 2001.
Summary: Shelter tells the story of 5 rural West Virginia women who come to the Family Refuge Center in Lewisburg, WV over a 5 year period as they try to find freedom, justice, and safety for themselves and their children. The documentary challenges institutional response and national ambivalence towards wife battering and offers the model of a positive and healing approach. Ellen Pence, Debby Tucker, and Tillie Black Bear, whose involvements date back to the early 70's, tell the history of an extraordinary grassroots movement that not only saved lives but also changed the way we think.