What made you want to do a documentary on the John Sayless film Matewan?
Honestly, I didn’t want to make this or any other documentary, but I think like a lot of filmmakers I wanted this story to be told and no one else seemed to be telling it. I grew up in West Virginia with many a substitute teacher showing Matewan in class and was able to meet so many people who worked on the film growing up. My first film class was from filmmaker Danny Boyd, who worked on Matewan and produced some of the more notable native West Virginia films of the 1980’s. I really appreciated the impact that this film had on the people I knew and the impact those people have had on others lives. I knew actors who saw Matewan as the thing that emboldened their choice in life, and entire communities that found a mission to pursue after the movie came out. We’re twenty years past now, an entire generation has grown up believing that filmmaking is a possibility because Matewan was made in West Virginia–near these people’s homes. This was a sweeping story that reached so far into the liv
