EXCLUSIVE: Only about 40,000 people work in coal mining in the U.S., a modest number compared to other lines of work – 1.7 million people, for instance, are employed in the auto industry.
And yet coal and coal mining occupy an almost mythic place in the American imagination that belies the labor force statistics. In the documentary King Coal, Oscar-nominated filmmaker and Appalachia native Elaine McMillion Sheldon examines a part of the country deeply embedded, one might say, in the charred rock. As America increasingly turns away from coal as an energy source and towards renewables, the future of coal country remains uncertain.
“A lyrical tapestry of a place and people, King Coal meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, and the myths it has created,” notes a description of the film. “Oscar-nominated filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon reshapes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking in a spectacularly beautiful and deeply moving immersion into Central Appalachia where coal is not just a resource, but a way of life, imagining the ways a community can re-envision itself.”
King Coal opens in New York at DCTV Theater on August 11, expanding in the succeeding weeks to cities and towns including Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Bluefield, WV, Charleston, WV, Hinton, WV, Akron, Ohio and Blacksburg, VA. We have your first look at the film in the trailer above.
For the rest of this article: https://deadline.com/video/king-coal-documentary-trailer-debut-director-elaine-mcmillion-sheldon-news/