Film Screening: Rocktown
The free screening of Rocktown: From the Small Farm to the Big Box is sponsored by the Graduate Student Senate and supported, in part, by the Arts Council of the Valley.
Rocktown is a documentary by first-time filmmaker and UMass alum Leslie Edwards. Edwards currently lives in Western Massachusetts, but grew up in a very similar agricultural valley in Virginia, and made a film to document the destructive impact that developers, multinational corporations, and complicit government officials are having on the traditional local economy, community, and way of life there.
The documentary includes interviews with Stacy Mitchell, author of Big Box Swindle and senior researcher with the New Rules Project, a program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance; and Jim Hightower, renowned populist activist, writer and radio commentator. The film's themes are, unfortunately, as relevant in Western Massachusetts as they are in Harrisonburg, Virginia.
For more info, contact Paper City Films at papercityfilms@gmail.com or visit the Rocktown blog.