Award-winning PBS producer and co-star visit campus, screen film

14 Mar 2007

Producer David Southerland and co-star Cody Perkins will screen the award-winning documentary Country Boys at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 3, in the Graduate Life Center at Donaldson Brown Auditorium on the Virginia Tech campus. This event is free and open to the public.

The evening features a quick synopsis of part one and a full screening of part two, followed by an open discussion of their motivations, intentions, and insights leading to the film.

Never has an Appalachian filmmaker obtained the long-term trust and goodwill of his subjects for a documentary as has Sutherland. Nor has a producer taken three years (1999-2001) out of his career to film the same two people as they went about the very ordinary business of living their lives. This Frontline documentary, which was originally broadcast in January 2006, focuses on the trials and triumphs of two young men from Floyd County, Kentucky: Cody Perkins and Chris Johnson.

Country Boys, like its rural Nebraska predecessor The Farmer's Wife, is a product of an especially intimate cinematic technique unique to Sutherland. He and his photographic crew live and work in close proximity of their subjects' own spaces in a way that is ethnographic, cinematographic, and journalistic at the same time. In so doing, they capture on film both nuanced and brutally clear life moments across the full spectrum of possible experiences. With no hidden agenda, Sutherland gives poignant and empathetic insights into the problems growing up in fragmented families in rural coalfield Appalachia.

Cody Perkins is an orphan who has been farmed out to various relatives for short periods of time before landing at the doorstep of his former step-grandmother who gives him stability, guidance, and love. His girlfriend's family, his heavy metal band, and his faith contribute to his ultimate success at the alternative David School from which he graduates. Yet finding his way is not easy and relatives seek to claim most of the modest inheritance left to him by his deceased parents.

Chris Johnson has to cope with an alcoholic father and an enabling mother while living in a mobile home with almost no income. Finding a sense of purpose and learning how to emotionally bond with others complicates his efforts to graduate. Obtaining a GED motivates him to apply for college.

This event is sponsored by the Appalachian Studies Program at Virginia Tech and is co-sponsored by the Department of Communication , the Office of Vice President for Research , Department of History , Office of Equal Opportunity , the Cook Counseling Center , Department of Science and Technology Studies , Department of Sociology , Department of Interdisciplinary Studies and its programs in the humanities, religious studies, and women's studies.