Oscar-Qualifying Short Film Sallie's Ashes Screens at Huntsville Library with Filmmaker Discussion

Sallie Smith, by her own account, doesn't know how to retire. Tonight, her story comes to Huntsville.

The award-winning short documentary Sallie's Ashes, described by its filmmakers as an Oscar-qualifying film, screens tonight at the Downtown Huntsville Library Auditorium, 915 Monroe Street Southwest, as part of a free public event running from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The Citizens' Climate Lobby Huntsville chapter and the League of Women Voters Alabama/Tennessee Valley are co-presenting the screening, which is currently showing at film festivals across the country.

The film centers on Smith, an 80-year-old Alabama grandmother facing terminal lung cancer, who organizes fellow grandmothers to fight for the removal of a toxic coal ash pit threatening Mobile Bay and the Tensaw Delta. The stakes the filmmakers put on screen are stark: if 21 million tons of cancer-causing coal ash sludge were spilled into the Tensaw Delta, Mobile Bay would be polluted forever. As the film frames it, "Sallie is racing against more than one clock. The cancer she once beat has returned and metastasized. With only months to live, can she and her friends pull off one final fight for their community, the Bay, and for the generations to come?"

Smith herself has said: "when I see something that's a problem, it tends to call my name... and once it's done that, I need to see it through."

The evening follows a structured agenda. Pre-screening social networking runs from 5:30 to 6:00 p.m., the screening itself fills the 6:00 to 6:45 p.m. block, and the final 45 minutes are reserved for a post-documentary conversation with Savan Wilson and Diane Thomas, two activists featured in the film who will discuss the threats coal ash poses to local waterways. The event page notes special thanks to the activists at Move the Ash, who are featured in the film and are coming to speak with Huntsville.

Organizers have framed the evening as a networking opportunity for civic, voting, and environmental protection groups. Seating in the auditorium is limited, and registration is required through the event's Eventbrite page.