Filmmaking in West Virginia

Event Promo for the 2019 West Virginia Filmmakers Festival

Click here for the film Mountains + Movies (53 minutes).

Okay, so maybe this should be on Hafodgau.com (our film site) instead of bhyer.com, but I think it’s important to showcase it here. In 2018, after showing my film End of the World Rocks at the West Virginia Filmmakers Festival, Renée Campbell, the festival organizer, mentioned that 2019 would be their 20th anniversary. My wife Cathy suggested that we shoot a documentary about it. Usually it’s me volunteering us for projects like this, but this time she did it. And so it began.

I saw this as a story that had legs, but wasn’t totally sure what direction it would go (as with most documentaries). We began by interviewing all the filmmakers we could find who had been named Filmmaker of the Year by the WVFF and went from there, and a common theme emerged.

Besides the fact that we met some really talented and interesting people, we learned that the difficulties faced by filmmakers in the state are daunting. But they persevere. There are so many tales to tell—as Chip Hitchcock put it, “You can’t swing a dead cat without finding a great story to tell.”

So Mountains + Movies was born. So far it’s been picked up by five festivals (waiting on decisions from several more); it’s a tough year for festivals.