Participation Type
Performance
Presentation #1 Title
Meadow Bridge
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Meadow Bridge is a West Virginia made independent feature film. It is a coming-of-age story that follows Darcy, a fourteen-year-old girl growing up in a small West Virginia town in the late 1990s.
It's a story about growing up on the edge of poverty and possibility - about trying to reach out into the bigger world, while wrestling with where you're from.
It's wry, comedic, and honest, with an all West Virginia cast. Transport yourself into a different world where you may have more in common than you think.
This film is a semi-autobiographical story. Our hope in making the film was to show a universal story about growing up in small town Appalachia. From an Upworthy article about the importance of the film in conversation with other films about the region: "Of course [the stories of devastation] are important," Tijah stresses. "But they're not the only stories. Not everything has to be just about devastation, about sorrow for our land. Of course it's sorrowful. Of course we're losing a lot. Of course they're blowing up mountains. But there are other things happening too.” As our tagline says, “sometimes telling a simple story is a revolutionary act.”
Meadow Bridge has won the West Virginia Best Feature Film at the 2017 West Virginia Filmmakers Festival, the Helen Hill Memorial Award for Best Female Director at the 2017 Indie Grits Film Festival in South Carolina, and other awards while screening at festivals in Pennsylvania, Idaho, Maryland, North Carolina and numerous screenings around West Virginia.
Film for review purposes only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCM7QpiaCmE
83 minutes running time
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Tijah Bumgarner is a filmmaker and assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Marshall University. Her academic research and creative work investigates the ways in which Appalachia has been built upon a single narrative of stereotypical tropes. Her research into this single narrative is grounded in the ways in which media has played such a significant role in shaping the perceptions of Appalachia. In both scholarship and practice, her work complicates that single narrative by finding the multiple stories, instead of the single, that make up the region.
Conference Subthemes
Diversity and Inclusion, Education
Meadow Bridge
Meadow Bridge is a West Virginia made independent feature film. It is a coming-of-age story that follows Darcy, a fourteen-year-old girl growing up in a small West Virginia town in the late 1990s.
It's a story about growing up on the edge of poverty and possibility - about trying to reach out into the bigger world, while wrestling with where you're from.
It's wry, comedic, and honest, with an all West Virginia cast. Transport yourself into a different world where you may have more in common than you think.
This film is a semi-autobiographical story. Our hope in making the film was to show a universal story about growing up in small town Appalachia. From an Upworthy article about the importance of the film in conversation with other films about the region: "Of course [the stories of devastation] are important," Tijah stresses. "But they're not the only stories. Not everything has to be just about devastation, about sorrow for our land. Of course it's sorrowful. Of course we're losing a lot. Of course they're blowing up mountains. But there are other things happening too.” As our tagline says, “sometimes telling a simple story is a revolutionary act.”
Meadow Bridge has won the West Virginia Best Feature Film at the 2017 West Virginia Filmmakers Festival, the Helen Hill Memorial Award for Best Female Director at the 2017 Indie Grits Film Festival in South Carolina, and other awards while screening at festivals in Pennsylvania, Idaho, Maryland, North Carolina and numerous screenings around West Virginia.
Film for review purposes only: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCM7QpiaCmE
83 minutes running time
