Jonathan Furnell is a media artist, experimental filmmaker and musician. Jonathan's work explores environment and the supernatural, the Appalachian South, and the space between sight and sound. His work aims to create a kind of “bluegrass” film, drawing on hillbilly histories and the paradox of Appalachia.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in Media Arts from the University of South Carolina and an MFA in Filmmaking from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
His work has appeared in the Athens International Film and Video Festival, the Cucalorus Film Festival, Cosmic Rays Experimental Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival, Indie Grits Film Festival and other venues.
He is passionate about Appalachian media representation, archival/lost media as well as analog, experimental and collaborative film culture. He is currently based in Wilmington, NC but his home is the southern Blue Ridge Mountains.
Rachel Pittman is a writer and film scholar based in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she is currently an adjunct instructor in the Film Studies Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). She holds a B.A. in Multimedia Journalism from the University of South Carolina and an M.A. in Film Studies from UNCW. Her research deals with experimental, avant-garde, D.I.Y. cinemas, media production histories, and aesthetics and politics. Other research interests include Appalachian moving image media, media and the environment, taste cultures, and medium specificity.
In addition to her scholarly work, Rachel’s creative writing has been published in The Bitter Southerner, The Los Angeles Review of Books’ Avidly, Film Cred, and Very Famous Magazine. She also frequently collaborates with her partner, Jonathan Furnell, on film experiments that explore environment, myth, and the ways in which histories come to be.