Film Screening: Swannanoan Silt

Buncombe County Special Collections invites you to attend the Helene anniversary screening of two films by local filmmakers on September 20th at 3:00 pm in the Pack Memorial Library Auditorium: Isaac King and Tristan Turner’s 2024 moving image installation "Swannanoan Silt" (accompanied by a live musical score by the filmmakers’ collaborator, Agis Shaw); paired with Drew Erin Adams's "The Swannanoa River" (2023).  

After the screening, filmmakers Isaac king and Tristan Turner will engage in a Q&A and discussion period with the audience.

This event is hosted in conjunction with a photography exhibition in the BCSC Reading Room on view from June 25 - September 30. Additional programming includes an opening reception on Tuesday, August 5.

Swannanoan Silt is presented as part of the Carolina Record Shop and the community memory project Come Hell or High Water, documenting the historic impact of Helene on Western North Carolina. 

About Swannanoan Silt

On September 27, 2024, Hurricane Helene wreaked catastrophic damage in North Carolina, including the small town of Swannanoa which, according to their fire chief Anthony Penland, experienced “total devastation.”

That continuing devastation is addressed in this unique film, created by two experimental filmmakers. The film is not a traditional documentary but an artistic, abstract, yet heartfelt approach to this cataclysmic event.

Isaac King, a native South Carolinian, centers his film practice around handmade and recycled cinema, while embracing the artistry of amateur filmmaking. He often uses celluloid film, manipulating its flexible materiality. His work and research focus on matters of representation and socio-ecological metamorphosis, particularly in the South.

Tristan Turner hails from Asheville, NC, and believes cinema is a “boundless platform of human expression.” His work aims to merge the past, via 16mm film, and the present, via digital film, in order to interrogate the medium of film and its aesthetic limits. By blending the two, Turner attempts to create “something both familiar and alien.”

Swannanoan Silt is a two-channel live projection performance examining how communities in Western North Carolina cope and rebuild in the aftermath of the hurricane. The simultaneously projected filmed footage and slides engage directly with the hurricane’s ecological impact since the film itself was processed in the contaminated Swannanoa and French Broad Rivers.

Ultimately, King and Turner’s aim is to highlight the extraordinary perseverance, empathy, and dedication of our mountain communities to help one another in the face of catastrophic adversity.

About The Swannanoa River

Shot on 16mm film before the devastation of Hurricane Helene, The Swannanoa River is a study of The Swannanoa River in Buncombe County, North Carolina, utilizing in-camera editing techniques.

Drew Erin Adams lives and works in the mountains of Western North Carolina.