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Twelve Lions Film Festival opens with 25th anniversary showing of 'Stranger With a Camera'

Stranger With a Camera at 25 - A benefit screening for Kentucky Humanities & celebration of 25 years of Stranger With a Camera - A special opening night event for the 3rd annual 12 Lions Film Festival.
The benefit screening at the Kentucky Theater will support Kentucky Humanities, which lost $850,000 in cut federal funding this year - about 71% of its budget.

Stranger With a Camera is a 2000 film by director Elizabeth Barret, produced and distributed by Appalshop. The movie explores the 1967 murder of Canadian filmmaker Hugh O’Connor in Letcher County, Kentucky.

O’Connor had been filming the daily lives of coal miners and was interviewing a family at the home they rented when the landowner shot and killed him.

Barret’s film explores the context of the murder from both sides of the lens, outlining a media landscape whose focus on Appalachian poverty often left communities feeling exploited and degraded.

Thursday night's 7:30 showing of Stranger With a Camera kicks off The Kentucky Theater’s Twelve Lions Film Festival and will include a musical performance from old-time trio Chestnut Ridge. Tickets are $15, with proceeds going toward the Kentucky Humanities Council.

The Twelve Lions Film Festival lasts through Sunday, offering free access to workshops and official selection films.