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Mari-Lynn Evans- 

The story of Mountain Top Removal (MTR) coal mining in Appalachia needs many voices. If Josh Fox (Gaslands) and I had a child parented by John Waters, it would be this film. These are two wild women working to save our environment. This is the missing voice!

Katherine McComas-

the powerless-ness that we experience here is very insidious. If you don’t know that things can be different, you go along with shit for the most part. Making a living is so hard here and there are so few choices. Of course, it has been kept that way by the coal industry…..the level of control here is amazing.

Liz Constable-

Yes, your film is one to be proud of: in many ways because of your own personal connections to the area, your buoyancy and directness, of course the people in the film, and in drawing attention to MTR by giving spectators an intensely situated context and cluster of associations with you and Annie that anchor it deep in our psyches . . . you remind me a little bit of the work of Agnes Varda in the sort of subjective-documentary style.
Yes, that’s it: Agnes Varda!! 

Janet Papale-

We celebrated New Year’s night by watching your video, which we both loved!   There’s something so wise and radical in the way you use joy to infuse activism; to me that seems to inspire action rather than click into powerless mode in the face of all that’s outrageous.  And I love your presence in the movie–in the yoga sutra it’s said that if you cultivate non-violence, there’s an aura of friendliness that develops around you–and that aura was so tangibly felt in the way you related to all you interviewed.  This innate sense of communality seems part of your West Virginia heritage.  I’d love to encourage you to keep writing about West Virginia, as well as to keep filming and collecting interviews.  Your film felt like an absolute counter to the community-fracturing history-obliterating actions of the coal companies……

Patricia Spangler-

Whoa momma.  Just finished previewing your movie and am totally–TOTALLY–blown away.   It’s poignant, touching, funny, relevant, spoofy–and so viscerally honest.  Have to admit out of all the wonderful segments that I loved–the dog howling during the singing of WV Hills was right up there.  This is a masterpiece in my humble opinion–so proud of both of you!

Nita Little-

Rich Reardin–

“There are a lot of levels to this movie, which is incredibly unusual and refreshing in the current climate of documentary filmmaking.  For one, you have the awful issue of mountain top removal strip mining in Appalachia, (blasting the tops off mountains to get to layers of coal) to learn about and ponder. But subsequently, the unfolding of this movie also exposes hidden layers of the human condition. In the film, a solution is not advanced here as it concerns profits, politics, greed, or the energy policies of the United States, but as an inner revolution of spirit concerning the way we can all experience the world. 

The foundational perspective here is exemplified as a core change of the inner mind defined as “Ecosexuality”. I can imagine viewers murmuring and giggling over hearing something said out loud concerning the extraordinary reality of  having sexual intercourse with nature. Or about how sensuality and sex with nature (as an authentic outward expression of interfacing with the universe) is a profoundly lost art in this age of dark rooms and silicon driven fantasy lands that dwell in our televisions, smart phones, and flickering computer monitors.  

In addition to the good natured childlike fun of innocently exploring the issue of what it means to actually love the world in which we live in, we also find the darker side of human nature.  It becomes obvious that some people, either through ignorance or greed,  love the Earth by exploiting it,  just as some exploit their relationships – all the way from controlling behavior to outright rape.  This film is brutally honest in it’s generous exploration of the yin and yang of the human condition.

The makers of this film also bring their own sexuality to the table by freely expressing their love for each other as same sex partners, culminating with their “marriage to the Appalachians”.  This film brings all kinds of pundit driven taboos, toxic behavior, and unkind labels like “Tree Huggers” to a new level of understanding, and acceptance.  Annie Sprinkle asks the question in the film, “Why is it a bad thing to be a tree hugger? I love trees!” 

This is a film that does more than entertain new ideas. Afterwards, you can’t help but pay attention to a new-found delight in the actual experience of sunshine caressing your bare skin, or conversely, the intense physical pain of beholding a previously forested mountain destroyed forever. The naive delusion of your existence as being separate and substantially independent from the world is dashed, and you are offered a new way actually embrace and share the universe as your lover. 

When is the last time a film made you feel like that?”