Viewing: September 17,2026
Join us Thursday, September 17th at 7:00 p.m. as our 5th Annual From the Hills and Hollers: Appalachian Stories Film Series begins with a classic documentary about the music of the mountains!
Admission is FREE – Tickets are required
This event will include a pre-show presentation by Becks Lipshultz
About the film
Step back in time to 1971 and go inside one of the premiere festivals devoted to the exciting, culturally relevant, and traditional form of music known as Bluegrass. Carlton Haney — a booking agent, talent scout, festival promoter, bluegrass musician, and known widely as “The P.T. Barnum of Country Music” — was one of the first folks to take a stab at promoting the virtues of this age-old style of music from the hills and hollers, largely through the creation of one of the first multi-day festivals featuring bands and solo performers who had been perfecting the style for generations. And, this film offers viewers both a front row seat and a behind-the-scenes look as some of the best performers of the era take the stage.
Featuring bluegrass music’s pioneers, as well as those who would take the music into the future, Bluegrass: Country Soul contains unforgettable performances by the likes of Earl Scruggs, The Osborne Brothers, Ralph Stanley, Chubby Wise, Mac Wiseman, J.D. Crowe, and Jimmy Martin, The Country Gentlemen, Del McCoury, Sam Bush, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Alan Munde, and more. Also of note is Tony Rice’s final show with The Bluegrass Alliance, and his first outing with J.D. Crowe & the Kentucky Mountain Boys. Most importantly, however, is the legacy this film has enshrined by preserving these legendary moments in color for generations to come.
About the speaker
becks! is a queer singer-songwriter whose Appalachian roots ground their music to place, while pushing the envelope of what it means to ‘belong’ in the folk and old time scenes. Their family history of union organizing and three generations of ‘card carrying communists’ bring an edge to their live performances that ties in some of their more commercial catalogue with the history of the Appalachian region and their family’s own resistances in the Ohio River Valley.
Check out the rest of our Hills & Hollers Series Line-Up
This series is sponsored by University Libraries, College of Health Sciences and Professions, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Honors Tutorial College, OU School of Film, and The Office of Signature Academic Experiences.
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Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Fiction, the Southern Book Prize, and the Weatherford Award, and selected as a Kirkus Best Book of 2020 and a Best LGBT Book by O Magazine. His debut novel The Evening Hour was adapted into a feature film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. His writing has appeared in publications includingThe Kenyon Review, The Atlantic, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, and Guernica. Carter is an assistant professor of creative writing at North Carolina State University.
Travis Eskins is a graduate student in the Film Studies program at Ohio University. He was born and raised in Huntington, West Virginia, where he studied Film and English Literature at Marshall University. His work is focused on depictions of labor movements in film, especially those from the Appalachian region. He is currently teaching a course on films set in Appalachia. 
Kelly Hatas is the Executive Director of Hocking Athens Perry Community Action (HAPCAP), an antipoverty nonprofit organization headquartered in Athens County. She earned her BA in International Relations from Shawnee State University in 2007 and went on to serve as an AmeriCorps*VISTA for three years there. That experience led to her interest in the nonprofit sector, and she earned her Master of Public Administration (MPA) from the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service at Ohio University in 2012. She has spent the rest of her professional career with HAPCAP, one of 1,000 Community Action Agencies that were established across the country as part of then President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty. Kelly grew up in Southwest Ohio, and will talk about how her perspective shifted after moving to, and choosing to stay in Appalachia. She lives in Athens County with her wife and two dogs.
Dr. Tiffany Arnold is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the College of Health Sciences and Professions where she coordinates the Appalachian Studies Undergraduate and Graduate Certificate Programs. Additionally, she teaches Public Health and Environmental Health Courses Focused on Appalachian studies.
