​Dark Holler
Never Met A Stranger // Jeremy Drummond & David Poolman
30:08 Minutes, Color/Sound, 4K/Super 35mm 

Built on a soundtrack of environmental soundscapes, field recordings, sound collages, and re-interpretations of traditional music of central Appalachia, Dark Holler is a 30-minute observational video recorded on Pine Mountain in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky. Somewhat of an anomaly in this region, Pine Mountain has withstood the effects of industrial coal mining -- this mountain exists because nothing can be mined from it. For centuries, Pine Mountain has also served as a home for musical, oral, and religious practices that have a complicated relationship with industrial progress and environmental degradation. Home to evolving cultural traditions as well as a contested site of industrial production and social resistance, Pine Mountain serves as a microcosm for exploring relationships between industry and the environment, landscape and vernacular culture, and preservation versus progress.

Press for Dark Holler

• Michael Pattison selects Dark Holler as one of his top 10 films of 2019 in Sight & Sound Magazine's The Best Films of 2019: All the Votes, published by the British Film Institute (April 2019). 

• Dark Holler reviewed by Ben Nicholson in Map Magazine as part of the Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival (May 2019)

• Dark Holler reviewed by Jamie Dunn in The Skinny  (June 2019)