Blog #10: Cucalorus Response

Cucalorus Response

by Lily Frame

1.     What Lies Upstream: (The documentary, What Lies Upstream, by Cullen Hoback premiered Sunday at 1 pm at the CFCC Union Station.)

What Lies Upstream initially struck my attention because Cullen Hoback took the role of an investigative filmmaker that strove to uncover the truth about the chemical spill in West Virginian’s waters in 2014. Raised in West Virginia, I was affected by this water crisis. I was the subject of this water spill. I was a sophomore in high school when this chemical spill and clean water supply was so rare that school was canceled for three weeks.

Cullen Hoback took on the role of the narrator and an on-screen interviewer; I was captivated by Hoback’s ambition to be the voice for a voiceless community. Hoback interviewed a variant of subjects varying from state legislatures, West Virginian citizens, a previous West Virginian Senator, West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), a health figure named Dr. Gupta, and many others. During these interviews, Hoback never swayed away from revealing the true identity of his interviewees: a figure from West Virginia’s DEP made a joke, laughing, and comparing the lethal chemical spill to being equivalent to people dying from smoking. During these interviews, his tone when he would ask his subjects questions was inquisitive. One of his most profound statements when he was addressed how West Virginia was breaking 25,000 rules from The Clean Water Act and the government was not acting upon it, “Regulation without enforcement is useless.” The most captivating aspect about this documentary was that the initial hero for this story, Dr. Gupta-a health figure that was latter in the documentary elected to represent the state agency- was finally portrayed as the antagonist, hiding information about the water spill from the people of West Virginia. In the Q&A’s after the film he had mentioned how you never know where your story will take you.

2.    Filmed in NC Panel:

The Filmed in NC Panel, a collection of trailer’s that represent works in progresses, represents filmmakers across the country that filmed their shorts in North Carolina. Supporting filmmaking in North Carolina, Cucalorus awarded grants to each of these artists who created these trailers.

One of these trailers entitled, Martin Hill: Camera Man by Joanne Hock, was a documentary about the North Carolinian obsessed filmmaking hoarder. This short initially grabbed my interest from the first frame. It was a black title screen with numerous of name grabbing films from Gone with the Wind, Star Wars, The Grapes of Wrath, and many others. This was an acting force for the narrative because it foreshadowed what was to come. Martin Hill owned an old bowling alley that he later used and turned into a hoarding space for a collection of antique cameras and famous filmmaking equipment with life of its own. Joanne Hock had been filming this project for nine years and revealed footage of Hill giving Hock a tour of his very own Hollywood studio. Martin Hill owned cameras and film equipment used by George Lucas and the films states earlier, but his biggest prized possession was the camera used to create the silent movies of Charlie Chaplin. The film now had motive to show footage from Charlie Chaplin’s, George Lucas’s, and many other films. In Hock’s Q&A that followed the trailers, she said the biggest challenge she has bringing this story to life is acquiring the rights. Hock strengthened her argument for the necessity of this documentary by quoting Leonard Maltin, Hill’s prior acquaintance, "Would you like to see the brushes Leonardo Da Vinci used to paint the Mona Lisa, or the chisel Rodin employed to carve The Thinker? Think of these cameras in the same way, and you’ll understand why they have artistic as well as historic value."