Ecosexual Film Fundraiser Gives Birth to a New Film Genre
As part of their growing Sexecology movement, Beth Stephens decided that it was important to create a documentary about a place that shaped her life. From this came Goodbye Gauley Mountain: An Ecosexual Love Story.
The film was produced and directed by Beth Stephens with Annie Sprinkle, detailing Beth’s family history in the coal mines, the couple’s visits, and eventually, getting married to the Appalachian Mountains.
Gauley Mountain is named after the Gauls who settled there. (Gaul is another term for the French.) However, the Appalachian region was settled by people from different places, apart from France. Coal mining was the major reason for the region’s growth. Beth was born in 1960, a time when there was still a lot of racism. “I was conceived in the coal fields. I wish I were kidding. I grew up in the middle of mining.”
“There’s so many people that came in to work in the mines. They came from all over the world. I grew up in a super multicultural environment, which became whiter in my lifetime. The mining and labor has been eradicated by machines. But when I was growing up, there were all kinds of people there. My doctor was Mexican. There were Italians, and Jewish people in the neighborhood, and there were Black neighborhoods.”
“I lived in Boston, I lived in New York, and I lived out here (San Francisco). I never lived anywhere where there was as many people of color living in such close proximity to me as in West Virginia. It’s so interesting because Appalachia is always stereotyped as being this crazy White haven of crazed Rednecks. The stereotypes continue to make that area vulnerable as a sacrifice for energy production.” 
Goodbye Gauley Mountain will be a part of their Ecosexual Film Festival, set to be shown in France and England this year. The film festival will also be part of the 1st International Ecosex Symposium, which will be in Spain, England and France. For those in the United States that are interested and cannot make it to the film festival, there will be a sneak preview of Goodbye Gauley Mountain over at the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco on March 30th. Tickets are priced at $15.00 each.
To see the trailer, go to www.goodbyegauleymountain.org
For details about the 1st international Ecosex Symposium, go to www.ecosexlab.org
For more about Beth and Annie’s ecosex projects, see www.sexecology.org