King Coal

Director: Elaine McMillion Sheldon, Sundance Official Selection, winner Best Documentary Feature: Seattle International Film Festival, Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, unrated

Join us Saturday, Sept. 9th at 7:00 PM on the patio for a pre-show reception and discussion with guest speaker Barry Zitser of The Bethlehem Sustainability Working Group followed by the film.

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon reshapes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking in a spectacularly beautiful and deeply moving immersion into Central Appalachia where coal is not just a resource, but a way of life, imagining the ways a community can re-envision itself. “Filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon, a native of [West Virginia], has done a breathtakingly expressive job of capturing the strangeness, the beauty and the devastation of her homeland in the poetic, entrancing documentary King Coal.” —Kyle Smith, Wall Street Journal

Barry Zitser, has held a number of state and municipal positions that have involved energy, utility regulation, and land use. As Connecticut’s Consumer Counsel in 1977-1985, as a member of the Connecticut Energy Advisory Board from 1987-1995, as a municipal attorney, and in private practice he has consistently supported sustainable clean, renewable energy, along with energy conservation and efficiency. In 1997 he received a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree, and has been certified in public health since 2008 by the National Board of Public Health Examiners. He has been an adjunct instructor in the MPH program at the University of Connecticut. Among the public health issues he has addressed are energy, mass transportation, deforestation, agriculture, and air, water and land pollution. Finally, Barry donates time to the Bethlehem community as a member of its Transfer Station Committee and Sustainability Working Group.