Our Movement Starts Here is an award-winning feature-length documentary film by directors John Rash and Melanie Ho that chronicles the story of a rural, majority-Black community in North Carolina that made history in 1982 by fighting the state’s toxic landfill, an event that is often said to have sparked the environmental justice movement.

The film will be followed by a conversation with the filmmakers and two of the participants in the film, Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis and Mrs. Dollie Burwell.

John Rash is an assistant professor of film production and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi and Melanie Ho is an assistant professor of practice in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.