Mother Daughter Earth Documentary Comes To The Pocahontas Opera House
“My parents dropped out of the city life in Los Angeles in the early 70’s,” says Julia Huffman. “It was the end of the Vietnam war and the country was coming apart at the seams. Many people had enough of what was being spoon fed to them by the government and it was a time of radical changing and shifting.”
That’s an excerpt from the documentary Mother Daughter Earth, created and produced by filmmaker Julia Huffman. She’ll be showing the documentary on Sunday, November 30th at 1pm at the Pocahontas County Opera House.
When her parents dropped out of the city life in LA, they took to the road for a couple of years in a camper with two kids and a dog. West Virginia was one of the states on their itinerary and it left a lasting impression on Huffman’s mom. Later, after her parents divorced, Huffman and her mother moved to Philadelphia for a while, until her mother could no longer resist the pull of West Virginia
“And then we moved back to the area in 1980 and I went to eighth grade in Hillsboro and then, of course, went to Pocahontas County [high school] and graduated,” she said. “So yes, a lot of my real development time in Pocahontas County.”
While still in high school, Gibbs Kinderman, the real father of AMR, recruited Huffman to be a dj and reporter for WVMR.
“You know, Gibbs Kinderman and Susan Burt had a pretty big influence on me,” said Huffman, “especially my senior year. I was a little bit of a restless teenager and didn’t really have focus, and Gibbs really helped me. I think he saw something; I won’t say [he] twisted my arm, but just kind of gave me a lot of nudges toward ‘hey I think you might want to try this’. “
“Then I started DJing and I started interviewing people; and I remember pretty instantly wow, there’s something really…mmm…it just felt really natural for me. I’ve got really fond memories of the radio station during that time.”
After graduation, she attended Bethany College for a degree in Broadcasting Journalism. In her junior year of college, a large Hollywood film company came to the school to film a story about the founder of Bethany. She got a job with the company working as a sound assistant. The director, Jerry Jackson, also saw a spark in Huffman, and the job lead to other jobs and collaborations on other films.
Her first large solo project was a multi-award-winning documentary called Medicine of the Wolf, based on Huffman’s concern about wolves in western states not only being delisted from the endangered species list, but also becoming a target for sport hunters. That was followed by a sequel call Wolf Spirit which won many accolades, including from Dr. Jane Goodall.
Her latest project, Mother Daughter Earth began as a way to document her mother’s garden through the seasons.
“Then it started to go a little bit deeper and I realized, wait a minute, I need to do this for me too,” said Huffman. “Ultimately I really connected the dots; Mom gave the gift of a connection to the land. And I’m so grateful ‘cause I’ll always have it and Mom’s been quite a steward for the planet, for West Virginia. I just got to a point where I started to feel like that was the story, more about a mother and daughter. “
You can see the film that Julia Huffman describes as a love letter to mothers and daughters Sunday, November 30th at the Pocahontas Opera House at 1pm. Her film Wolf Spirit will also be shown. There is a suggested $10.00 donation to attend.
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