Appalachian Film Festival

Appalachian Festival

 

 

For nearly a decade now Frostburg has held the Appalachian Festival for its students and the community. The festival provides a lot of activities for everyone to enjoy and bond over. This is a very joyous event that students have been raving about this entire month.

Prior, to getting this assignment I wanted to experience what everyone was talking about first hand. On Thursday, September 18th I attended the film viewing of Triple Divide for this years Appalachian Festival. The event was held at Palace Theater on 31 E. Main Street, Frostburg, MD. The theater had an old school vibe. It was built out of red bricks, with a big sign in bright lights on the roof of the building,  with a big ticket booth outside of the theater. I was amazed by the theater’s building and ticket booth because I never really seen that design up close in person. While waiting in line I could feel the positive energy and anxiousness from everyone around me. More importantly, I could smell the buttery popcorn that was being made while I waited outside to get in .

There were a lot of people that attended the premiering of the documentary. The audience were mainly students and elderly people. Before the film started I was prepared to be either bored and potentially sleep since it was a film I never heard of and it was free. However, I was wrong. Triple Divide was pretty interesting.

The film was narrated by Mark Ruffalo and the primary setting was in Pennsylvania. The movie essentially discussed the negative effects that extracting shale gas has had  over the years such as: the environment, local communities, the economy, the closing of other businesses, and people’s health. There were various interviews with a lot of environmentalist experts  and citizens to reiterate how serious of a problem the development of shale gas presented.

The objective of Triple Divide was to show its audience that public agencies has not been doing their jobs right, and has been favoring protecting industries rather than protect the environment and people. This has been shown consistently throughout the film. For example, when nothing was done about pre drill testing and post drill testing when it was evident that the system failed. There were many instances in Triple Divide that showed corruption with public agencies and fracking.

“O my!”, said an elderly lady two seats directly ahead of me. This was one of many reactions, to one scene that really grasped everyone’s attention and caused a few gasps. The film was better than I expected and I definitely got to experience of the Appalachian Festival. I look forward to the next one.