Black Mountain Filmmakers focus on Local Farms

Local farms will be the subject for Black Mountain filmmakers, Cinnamon and John Kennedy June 30th in Asheville at the Highland Brewery and at Black Mountain Ale House on July 7th. The Kennedys, who have produced video for The New York Times, The Washington Post, USAToday, The Gates Foundation and the United Nations Millennium Campaign, have been filming local farms affiliated with the Black Mountain NC tailgate market.

“I was filming entrepreneurs during the time of the economic crash,” Cinnamon Kennedy explained. “I was collecting video stories of people who were creating their lives, or re-inventing their lives, working for 60, 70, 80 hours a week, with no safety net to catch them. From this material I was drawn to stories about area farmers.”

John and Cinnamon Kennedy, of the production company Purple States LLC, are working in partnership with Meredith McKissick,  a farmer at Foothills Family Farms in Old Fort and director of the Organic Growers School . The Organic Growers School hopes the film series will draw more attention toward supporting the small independent farms of Western North Carolina .

The Kennedys and McKissick will use four area farmers, train them to use handheld HD cameras and direct them in the filming of this harvest season. The Kennedys plan to find a state or national platform for the project. A three-minute trailer has been filmed showing the struggles and passions of today's small farmers.

The June 30th and July 7th events are being cosponsored by the Organic Grower’s School. Other organizations involved in the project are the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP) and Slow Food Asheville. Both events will be held at 7pm, and will be used as an outreach an awareness of local food, organic food, and the choices made by all of us about what we eat. The trailer for the series will be aired, and the event will be used as a fundraiser to buy the cameras, microphones, stands and to launch the filming.


The trailer for the series can been seen at the website www.farmersfilm.com. Some of the farmers involved in the project can be met at the Black Mountain Tailgate Market, which is open from 9am to noon, every Saturday during the Summer and Fall, behind the Black Mountain Baptist Church , off of Montreat Road .