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King Coal

@kingcoalfilm

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A meditation on the cultures & myths of the American coalfields. @nytimes Critic’s Pick @povdocs film -stream on @primevideo and @appletv and @kanopy

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Congrats to @currensheldon for TWO cinematography nominations this week from @idaorg & @cinema.eye.honors by @kingcoalfilm

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3 years ago

We're unbelievably thrilled that @currensheldon’s work for KING COAL is being recognized at Camerimage - a festival that celebrates and awards cinematography and cinematographers. The 2023 @camerimage.festival documentary feature competition is a selection of only 7 films worldwide. The competition recognizes the art of documentary filmmaking as creative interpretation of reality. Putting emphasis on the visual and aesthetic aspects of the selected nonfiction entries, the jury awards the best cinematographers in the competition. Curren will be traveling to Toruń, Poland this November to meet some of the most talented cinematographers of our time. Also a BIG congrats to our friend Luke Lorentzen whose film "A Still Small Voice" is also in competition! by @kingcoalfilm

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3 years ago

We are beyond elated to announce that @riverrunfilm festival has awarded us with a Special Jury Award for Best Cinematography!!! 👑🎉

From RiverRun:
“We are awarding a Special Jury Award for Cinematography for King Coal because of the spellbinding images that carried the story in such a beautiful and mesmerizing way. The cinematography spoke to the soul of an area that has been dominated by the coal industry.”

We’re so grateful for this recognition of @currensheldon’s work behind the camera to bring beautiful Central Appalachia and the story of KING COAL to the screen 🙏🏻
We hope everyone gets a chance to make it to one of our upcoming screenings to experience the film for themselves! 🪨🌲💫 by @kingcoalfilm

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3 years ago

Wow - we’re so excited about today’s news.
KING COAL has been nominated for 3 Emmy Awards
Outstanding Arts & Culture Documentary
Outstanding Writing
Outstanding Cinematography

Thanks to @povdocs, all our funders, supporters and congrats to our team!

Winners announced June 26 by @kingcoalfilm

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a year ago

Happy Earth Day! We are happy to announce you can now watch King Coal for free with your public library card on Kanopy! Share with your loved ones 🌱 #earthday #movienight #kanopy #kingcoalfilm by @kingcoalfilm

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a year ago

The companion book to King
Coal features poetry, photographs, and archival images from the film. It's a pocket-sized beauty that @elainemcsheldon made…just because!

get yours in the link in our bio. by @kingcoalfilm

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2 years ago

It’s nearing the end of summer, and I’m dreaming of fall already. I feel a jolt of energy when I catch the smell of campfire in the cool air, and hear crisp leaves under my feet.

An ending is also a beginning.

(Lanie from 2021, shot by @currensheldon, in the crisp forests of Fayette County WV) taken in Fayetteville, West Virginia by @kingcoalfilm

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🚨 KING COAL is now streaming through PBS on Amazon Prime. Rent or buy tonight #movienight blu-rays and DVDs available too for you old school cinephiles
Links in bio by @kingcoalfilm

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2 years ago

A behind the scenes note from @elainemcsheldon from the @creative_capital diary

We looked to other traditions — family archives, poetry, folklore, magical realism, ghost stories, fables, dance and movement, the land itself, and sound art, among other cinematic tools — to help guide the final language of the film.

My own family archives began to be a portal in which I could imagine new and old narratives colliding. My family has been in Appalachia for nine generations. My great uncle, Roy Russell, documented the mundane and surreal moments of his life in the mountains. Moments of kids at play, of my great grandmother writing letters, of the first miners in my family, of decorating graves at the family cemetery, and of ladders that led to unknown caves.

In the end, I learned that I needed to break open my ways of working. Of relearning how to tell stories, how to add more play into my nonfiction, to get to a deeper, more internal truth beyond an observed truth. My community is in need of grieving as a way of processing the impact coal has had on us. But I also was in need of this. I used this film as a way to grieve with my community and family. by @kingcoalfilm

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THE MAKING OF KING COAL - movie inspiration (see watchlist in link in bio) from the @creative_capital diary

We began filming King Coal in 2019, but when COVID-19 kept us at home, I (@elainemcsheldon) had time to start thinking more about the goals of this film as a piece of cinema, not just from a traditional documentary impact point of view. I sought out films that helped me break open the ways I had been telling stories. Above are some images from films that inspired my thinking behind King Coal. These are films that explore the myths of places, the dreams of children, hauntings and ghosts stories, dance and movement, surreal sound design, use voice-over narration as a guide, feature raw vérité moments, rely on mosaic structures, center children and/or women, employ wardrobe and production design as a form of storytelling, explore Afrofuturism and magical realism, use editing to create new worlds with a single cut, and where metaphors and symbolism are at the center of plot. There are many more films to be listed (“Badlands” by Terrence Malick also comes to mind when writing the voice over narration), but it felt like a very important part of my process to broaden my reference points outside of documentaries. I aimed to tell a story that was felt, but not always seen. That required me to employ cinematic tools I had never used before in vérité filmmaking. This was a team effort of rewatching and relearning alongside @ivarad @cottagemfilms @currensheldon @mollyborn @dibecka @elijahstvns @clarahaizlett @billywirasnik @bobak____ @loganhill33 by @kingcoalfilm

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2 years ago

Congrats to KING COAL director @elainemcsheldon AND sound supervisor @soundbyalexandra for being invited to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. So happy to see so many fellow filmmakers we admire - congrats to all and shoutout to @jeaniefinlay @walleyesystems @mstyslav.chernov @beadiefinzi @ramellross by @kingcoalfilm

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Yippee!! You can now stream KING COAL on @povdocs. Enjoy the film and give us your thoughts here in the comments or in the survey (link in bio) 🪄 ⭐️ by @kingcoalfilm

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