Amador County – A documentary about revitalizing rural communities in the foothills may have a story to tell that is common to other areas of the region.

A 30 minute TV documentary, “Up From the UnderStory,” will air on KVIE TV March 9 at 7 p.m., after the Blue Mountain Community in West Point “united to face social, economic and environmental challenges,” said Holly Mines, who promoted the film locally in Amador County.

Mines said she believed it “will be of interest to a much broader audience than just West Point of Calaveras County since most of our counties are facing similar challenges and searching for ways to address them.”

Directed by Jesikah Maria Ross, the documentary “shows how an isolated rural community in the Sierra Nevada foothills has come together to overcome social, economic and environmental challenges after a century of mining and logging.

Ross said the film “documents how a diverse group of rural residents – loggers, environmentalists, Native Americans, urban transplants – in the Blue Mountain area of Calaveras County came together to chart a new path for their economically devastated community.

The program traces the history of boom and bust resource extraction cycles in the Sierra, how the Blue Mountain community launched rural revitalization movement to create a more sustainable future, and the recent role UC Davis has played in supporting their efforts.

The documentary was created in collaboration with Blue Mountain community members who helped script and shoot historical sequences, provided archival images, and created short videos profiling current revitalization projects.

The film “emerged from an innovative university-community engagement project designed to support the Blue Mountain community’s rural development efforts,” Mines said. Coordinated by media artist Jesikah Maria Ross, the project brought university students and scholars together with rural youth and community leaders to create videos that provided a previously undocumented local history and profiled the diverse change efforts happening in the community. These videos could then be used to raise awareness of important projects underway and galvanize public support to help sustain the revitalization movement.

The film project launched the UC Davis Art of Regional Change program, a joint initiative of the Davis Humanities Institute and the Center for Regional Change, of which Ross is director.

The film was made with a grant from the California Council of Humanities and by funding from the UC Davis University Outreach and International Programs.

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