EDITOR’S NOTE BY RYAN PITKIN

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

NEWS& OPINION 4 EDITOR’S NOTE BY RYAN PITKIN 6 DAY AND NIGHT BY RYAN PITKIN Ongoing protests show di erent tactics in the Movement for Black Lives ARTS 10 SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY BY LIZ LOGAN Charlotte  lmmakers depict beauty and horror in Appalachia

MUSIC

12 THE BOLD AND THE VIRTUAL BY PAT MORAN

Local company keeps the music alive online

14 WHERE IS THE FRY? BY LILLIAN TAYLOR

Popular food truck keeps rubber to the road during quarantine

17 LIFEWAVE

A dose of virtual reality

FOOD& DRINK

LIFESTYLE 18 20 PUZZLES AERIN IT OUT BY AERIN SPRUILL 21 HOROSCOPE 22 SAVAGE LOVE BY DAN SAVAGE

day& night

COVER DESIGN BY: JAYME JOHNSON PHOTOS BY: YOLIÁN ORTIZ PAT MORAN, YOLIÁN ORTIZ, GRANT BALDWIN,

JOSHUA GALLOWAY, LIZ LOGAN, STEVE NAYLOR,

LILLIAN TAYLOR, AERIN SPRUILL AND DAN SAVAGE

EDITOR’S NOTE

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE LIVESTREAMED We are dedicated to bringing you the unfiltered truth in a time of change

BY RYAN PITKIN

When I arrived to the Express Mart across the street from the CMPD Metro Division office on May 29 to attend a protest in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, I felt like I had been in that same situation many times before, and yet I truly did not know what to expect.

I have been covering activism in Charlotte for around 10 years now. It’s how I started my career in journalism, from Occupy Charlotte on through the years.

From climbing through thick woods around Duke Energy’s Marshall Steam Station to find where activists had stopped a train full of coal from leaving Mooresville, to following the round-theclock protest marches surrounding the Democratic National Convention in 2012 until my feet were too blistered to walk.

I’ve also closely watched the growth and evolution of a movement that has grown impossible to ignore around the country in recent years — one that focuses on holding police accountable for their all-too-often unchecked violence against Black bodies.

Most popularly recognized as the Black Lives Matter movement, or the Movement for Black Lives (though both of those terms refer to specific organizations, so use them at your own discretion), Charlotte has unfortunately been all too familiar with the trauma of police violence.

Jonathan Ferrell, Janisha Fonville, Keith Lamont Scott and Danquirs Franklin were all shot and killed by CMPD officers, and those names come directly to mind because of the community reaction I witnessed in response to their killings.

However, they’re just a fraction of the real toll.

And yet, something about George Floyd’s murder, the video of officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s back as his consciousness slipped away for the last time, just felt different.

We’ve all watched from afar as different cities have responded to police killings in their own way in the past, then sprung into action when it’s happened in our own cities. But something about that video of Floyd’s death struck a nerve, and the country rose up together for the first time.

Not only were organizers across the country planning simultaneous action in a more widespread way than we’d ever seen before, but folks who had never paid attention before suddenly started to realize this was no longer something they could ignore.

As Queen City Nerve publisher Justin LaFrancois and I stepped out of his car on that Friday night of May 29, he nonchalantly asked if he should “Go Live” from our Facebook account, meaning to livestream the protest. I said sure, it couldn’t hurt, and went on my way live-tweeting and documenting the goings on of the evening.

What happened that night and through the weekend you can read about in this week’s cover story on page 6, but what happened on that Facebook Live page was something I had never seen before. Thanks in part to this new awakening that the country was experiencing, and also to Justin’s raw reporting skills and willingness to put himself in danger to tell the story truthfully as it was happening rather than rely on spin from any side of the issue, people locked in on his daily streams.

Justin and I walked around 30 miles each that weekend, with him walking even further as he continued nonstop coverage while I worked to put this paper together. The reaction he got showed us both why we risked everything to start this paper in the first place.

As of this writing, all of his live-streams collectively have garnered over 1.5 million views, a staggering number for two guys who just figured we’d check out a protest on a Friday night and stream it to see what happened.

I don’t say all this to brag about social media numbers or make an entire population’s trauma our success story, I say it for quite the opposite reason. We started this paper to bring people the news stories they need to know about from the viewpoint of the folks living through them on the ground without spin from politicians, officials or filtered through mainstream media outlets. And that’s exactly what we’ve done.

The rawness of Justin’s live-stream coverage is the epitome of that goal being fulfilled, and the reaction we’ve gotten from community members has been overwhelming.

If you watch one of these streams during the ongoing protests now (as I write this I plan to send the paper to print and go join him at another rally), you’ll see that it’s getting hard for Justin to move around and do his job without someone coming up and thanking him for his work.

It’s not about a cult of personality, or Justin getting famous off the grief of a community, it’s about people telling him that they wouldn’t have been aware of what was happening if it weren’t for our work.

People have approached us continuously and told us that they wouldn’t have joined the protests if it weren’t for him, or that they haven’t been able to find a single source that covers these demonstrations in such a way that they feel they can fully trust it like they can trust Justin in his storytelling.

That is actually a depressing thought, but it also why we exist in the first place, and I’m so happy that we do in this time when it’s important to hear the stories from the folks on the ground who are putting their bodies on the line to fight for what they believe in.

Now as President Trump, who’s built an immovable base of support by convincing his followers that the media is the enemy, begins to huff and puff and threaten to send in all his military might to suppress protests across the country, it’s more important than ever to have these independent voices telling stories as they happen.

We’re more than happy and humble to serve that purpose, and we thank every one of you who has followed along.

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

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NEWS & OPINION FEATURE a group of local organizers, some of whom had split with the Charlotte Uprising after 2016 to Beatties Ford Road, she jumped from her bed and made her way to the scene. beginning, when organizers first crossed the street to stand in front of the Metro Division precinct, where form groups such as Serve the People CLT and Red “I always tell everybody when I’m going to a 10 members of CMPD’s Constructive Conversation DAY AND NIGHT Guards Charlotte. Members of the group had last made local news in June 2019 when they jumped protest, but I didn’t tell anybody anything,” Ottley recalled later. “My daughter was highly upset when Team (CCT) awaited them. The team was formed in 2016 following the Charlotte Uprising. It consists of Ongoing protests show on the dais in the meeting chambers of the she saw me on Facebook running because we’re 20 officers who go into protests and demonstrations different tactics in the Movement for Black Lives Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center during a city council public forum about proposed noise ordinance amendments outside of medical facilities getting shot with rubber bullets. She was mad as hell. I’m out here getting tear-gassed and all this mess trying to get these people out of the street to engage with the folks taking part, hoping to build a rapport through having difficult conversations. One protest leader made it clear with her BY RYAN PITKIN bullhorn that “We are not going to protest the way police want us to,” Kass Ottley was already in bed when things started to go bad on the first night. Ottley, founder of Seeking Justice CLT, has been a community organizer in Charlotte for 10 years, and from the moment she heard about a protest planned in front of the CMPD Metro Division office on Friday, May 29, she was uneasy about how that would end up. The protest was the first to be held in Charlotte in response to the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on the previous Monday. A video of the killing shows Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while he repeatedly states that he can’t breathe, then calls for his mother before losing consciousness. Three other officers stand by idly as Floyd dies. The video set off protests in Minneapolis, followed by other cities across the country, leading to the most widespread simultaneous Black Lives Matter protests since the movement began in 2013 in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. And on May 29, 2020, the George Floyd protests reached Charlotte, leading to more than 100 arrests in the first four days and debates over who was to blame for escalating tensions and inciting violent confrontations between police and protesters. Friday night’s Metro Division protest stemmed from a Facebook event titled “Justice for George Floyd,” and was hosted by a newly created group called Justice for Police Brutality - Charlotte, which led back to a couple clearly fake Facebook profiles. Local organizers who wanted to respond to George Floyd’s murder how they saw fit — with the memory of protests that later proved to be planned by Russian bots during the Charlotte Uprising still fresh in their heads — were skeptical from the time the event hit Facebook. Some worried that it was a product of the Boogaloo Boys, an emerging anti-government right-wing extremist group that formed in preparation for a second Civil War and is known to infiltrate Black Lives Matter protests to incite violence against police. The protest was later found to be hosted by such as abortion clinics. As for Ottley, her concerns weren’t based on who was planning the protest, but where they were planning it. The CMPD Metro Division office sits right in a part of the Beatties Ford Road corridor that’s extremely significant to local Black culture, a block away from the Excelsior Club and half a mile from Johnson C. Smith University, with four historically black neighborhoods within a onemile radius. As Ottley went to bed that night, she tuned into live streams to check on how things were going, worried that instigating confrontations between police and the members of those communities would end tragically. She watched for over an hour until things began to escalate. When tear gas began to spread across and into the house, and [the organizers of the protest] are doing nothing, thinking they’re doing something good.” Queen City Nerve was at the protest from the sometimes standing between the CCT officers and protesters to drown out their conversations. Organizers handed out pieces of paper with the Serve the People logo that read, “There are no good cops!” and explained how police keep workingclass Black communities like the ones on the Beatties Ford corridor in “semi-slave like conditions” in order to protect private property. As the evening progressed, protesters marched peacefully up Beatties Ford Road toward the Lincoln Heights neighborhood. Many community members stood on their porches with fists raised in support or simply waving to the protesters. One woman angrily ran into the crowd when it stopped at the intersection of LaSalle Street and Beatties Ford Road, demanding that everyone leave because, “People get shot in this community all the time and you don’t care.” A PROTESTER SPEAKS AT A MAY 29 PROTEST AT CMPD METRO DIVISION. PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN PROTESTERS AT THE INTERSECTION OF LASALLE STREET AND BEATTIES FORD ROAD. PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN

NEWS & OPINION FEATURE underserved, that has had three police shootings that I can think of in that area — one not that protest “was always meant to be confrontational, but never meant to be violent.” message across, and we haven’t been getting it. People who have been activists for a while, they long ago with Danquirs Franklin — and play off of Florence believed the more experienced haven’t been getting the message across, getting

An older man offered a more nuanced critique: those people’s anger and emotion, get them riled organizers in the city were denigrating the protest actual change to happen, so I feel like they’re mad “All these motherfuckers goin’ to call the police as up and then fall back and go home to their quiet because they were not allowed to control it. He because they couldn’t take advantage of it and soon as they’re in trouble,” he said. “Then you just neighborhoods — no helicopters, no tear gas, no claimed that people working with reputable elevate themselves. gotta hope you don’t get that one racist cop!” blockades — and traumatize those people all over organizations had not shown enough results in the “But really it was about the people who

Upon returning to the station, confrontations again,” Ottley said. showed up to voice their with police grew more aggressive. Despite having “So I was really grievances and fight many seemingly meaningful conversations as dusk angry, I’m still back against the police,” angry.” he continued “It’s not Queen City about any one person Nerve spoke to organizing it, it’s about one organizer of the people, so that’s who the Beatties Ford really matters. If other Road protest who people have grievances told us that, “This with what the people narrative that it’s did, then from my white people going perspective it seems like in and instigating they don’t actually care the violence is about their voices.” just not accurate.” As for the location of On the ground, the protest, Florence said it appeared to be they picked the Beatties a rather diverse Ford Road corridor group of organizers, specifically because of its although one white proximity to historically woman who took a lead role on Friday PROTESTERS DODGE TEAR GAS IN UPTOWN ON MAY 30. PHOTO BY JOSHUA GALLOWAY black neighborhoods. “The people who night drew the ire are going to respond the

A MAN PROTESTS PEACEFULLY AT METRO. of many of the protest’s critics. past. most are going to be people in historically black PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN The member of the group that Queen City Nerve “Activism is not something you can just do and neighborhoods because that’s who experiences talked to, who spoke on condition of anonymity receive praise for, you actually have to accomplish [police harassment] the most,” he said. “So this fell, the CCT officers eventually went inside the and asked to be identified only as Florence, said the something,” Florence said. “You have to get your criticism that we’re just trying to get black people station, and out came the Civil Emergency Unit arrested, no, we’re doing this so (CEU), better known as riot police. For the next they can voice their grievances. If five to six hours, things would break down, as we go to a white, majority wealthy police deployed tear gas and shot pepper balls neighborhood, they’re not going — paintballs filled with pepper spray — into to have problems with the police. the crowds. They’re well off enough to the point

It was a pattern that would repeat itself where they don’t have to worry about in the coming days as protests moved into police brutality. The people who Uptown: Protesters would spend the day and actually have to deal with this on a early evening marching peacefully, seeing an daily basis, they deserve to have a outpouring of support from passersby, residents platform to fight back.” on their balconies and those in traffic who On that Friday night, police would honk their horns and throw up a fist. arrested 15 people, more than half Then, as night fell, confrontations with police of whom were charged only with would heat up, eventually leading to tear gas, failure to disperse. Among those pepper balls, and bottles and rocks turned into were Charlotte City Council member projectiles. Braxton Winston and the ACLU’s local

It was a pattern that Ottley saw coming, and campaign manager Kristie Puckettnever wanted to see occur on the Beatties Ford Williams. corridor. Like Ottley, Williams didn’t agree

“I was angry because I sat there and I with protesting on Beatties Ford watched a group of white people come into a predominantly black neighborhood that is CIVIL EMERGENCY UNIT OFFICERS IN FRONT OF THE METRO DIVISION OFFICE. PHOTO BY GRANT BALDWIN Road, but attended reluctantly in

order to serve a mediating role.

“Myself and councilman Winston had been out there for hours, we were there to monitor the situation and to ensure the safety of the people,” she later told Queen City Nerve. “He and I know all too well the effects of police brutality on the black community. We didn’t want to see that happen again.”

Williams believed she and Winston were targeted by police not only because they were highprofile protesters, but because they were keeping things in order. Video of Winston’s arrest shows him standing peacefully between police and protesters when he’s plucked from the street by a group of CEU officers in riot gear.

“What became apparent was they don’t want peace,” she later said of the police. “People were peaceful, they weren’t throwing shit at them. They were just talking shit to them, holding the line with them. When they arrested Braxton, it didn’t even make sense. But it does make sense, because I think what the real issue is, Braxton and I had more control than they did over the crowds, and they didn’t like that. If they took us out, they believed that the rest of the crowd would disperse, which actually, from what I was told, things deteriorated after we were arrested.”

And despite peaceful protests during the day on Saturday and Sunday, things continued to deteriorate as night fell each evening.

During a virtual city council meeting on June 1, Winston addressed CMPD Deputy Chief Johnny Jennings during a briefing on the ongoing protests. After questioning CMPD’s deescalation policies, their “blanket decisions” to arrest people for failure to disperse, and their tactics at the Friday protest, during which they pushed protesters up Beatties Ford Road away from the division office and toward “vulnerable businesses,” Winston then asked Jennings directly about his own arrest.

“What could I have done differently to not be arrested?” Winston asked.

“You could have left,” answered Jennings, who less than two weeks previous had been named the successor to CMPD Chief Kerr Putney after he retires in September. “When the dispersal order was given you could have walked away. I’m not going to try your case talking to you THE LINE

here at this meeting, but the bottom line is that thrown at us, we know then that it has gone from to destroy property, they’re lawfully protesting, and the people that left, they did not get arrested. You a lawful protest to an illegal riot, and we move we encourage and accommodate. Otherwise, we stayed there, you remained, you were part of the accordingly,” Putney said, explaining the steps he have to maintain order and will do so.” line as officers pushed through and that’s what takes before deploying the CEU. Queen City Nerve was on the ground during happened.”

During a virtual media press conference following Jennings’ briefing on June 1, Chief Putney stated that he found Floyd’s murder “disgusting” and that he has been surveying members of his CEU and other units because he doesn’t want anyone who felt differently working with the CMPD. However, he emphasized that those feelings will not stop him from employing force to protect his officers and city property. He pointed out that eight officers had been injured up to that point (three more were injured later on Monday night) and officers had confiscated many weapons from protesters. Putney laid out the department’s policies BLACK LIVES MATTER. PHOTO BY JOSHUA GALLOWAY for dealing with demonstrations, distinguishing When asked about claims that police had protests all day and night throughout the weekend, between protests that are peaceful, lawful and escalated situations throughout the weekend, and did witness plenty of back and forth between illegal, each one building in aggression as the police Putney denied that was the case. protesters throwing objects and police shooting see it. “That is totally unfounded,” he said. “If no one tear-gas canisters, flashbang grenades and shooting

“When we have that first rock or brick or bottle throws a rock or assaults our officers, if no one tries pepper balls. It was often hard to tell just who instigated each specific situation, but reporters on the ground witnessed multiple incidents in which police acted unnecessarily violent and antagonistic. In one such instance that happened on Sunday afternoon in Uptown, bicycle police directed protesters into a parking garage at Whole Foods in Stonewall Station in Second Ward. After funneling them in without aggression, a team of CEU officers marched down Brevard Street and began pummeling protesters with pepper balls, offering them little chance to escape. The incident was caught on Queen City Nerve’s Facebook Live stream, in which Nerve publisher PHOTO BY JOSHUA GALLOWAY Justin LaFrancois was caught in

NEWS & OPINION COLUMN widespread racial restrictions in property deeds, stating in many of the deeds, “This lot shall be protest ended. “It’s like, OK, are these people going to be really pissed off and confrontational or are they owned and occupied by people of the Caucasian going to embrace us? You don’t know what’s going the deluge and struck with multiple pepper balls. race only.” to happen. Some people joined us, even the kids Another video circulated online that showed the In the early 20th century, John Nolen specifically coming out, handing out the water, it was really, incident from a balcony in the Novel apartments designed Myers Park’s curved streets to disorient really nice. I was glad we had a lot of young people above the garage. unwanted guests and send them right back from with us, because they want to be a part of what’s

Despite a weekend in which 107 protesters whence they came, but on Monday, June 1, 2020, going on but they also don’t want to be a part of were arrested from Friday night through Monday Ottley and about 1,500 of her supporters wouldn’t something violent.” night and dozens were injured, not to mention be turned away. They marched through the She added that there was still too much police authoritarian threats made by President Donald neighborhood for around two and a half hours, led presence for her liking, though the way they Trump on Monday night in which he stated he at times by Carolina Panthers defensive players Shaq interacted with the crowd on Monday was markedly would be deploying the military to quell protests around the country, most of the organizers Queen City Nerve spoke with were optimistic about where the movement was headed as we moved into June.

“It actually makes me hopeful,” said Florence. “You see the news and it presents it as chaos and destruction, but there’s unity amongst people who are actually coming to fight back. There’s been a massive positive response across racial lines. So going forward I think we’re still going to have to get organized, we’re going to have to plan things out and be more careful, be more responsible, but I think this is a turning point in history where people are PROTESTERS TAKE A KNEE AT THE INTERSECTION OF QUEENS ROAD AND SELWYN AVENUE ON JUNE 1. going to come together Thompson and Tre Boston. different from the interactions she witnessed on and fight against racism in a big way.” The crowd chanted loudly, stopping at the Beatties Ford Road on Friday.

On Monday evening, while city council grilled intersection of Queens Road and Selwyn Avenue to “How police engage in black communities and Jennings about police tactics, Putney answered take a knee for nine minutes in memory of George how police engage in white communities is totally questions from local media, and Trump threatened Floyd. Throughout the march, Myers Park residents different,” Ottley said. “The tone is different, the military action against American civilians looked on from their lawns, some showing passive conversation is different, there’s a whole different before ordering the tear-gassing of protesters in support, others setting up water stations for passing level of respect. I’m like, ‘Wow, maybe if you tried Washington D.C. so he could pose for a photo-op protesters. to do that in the black community, maybe you’d get across the street from the Rose Garden, Ottley Ottley said she had received calls from concerned a better response.’ It was ridiculous [on Friday], to herself was busy leading Seeking Justice CLT’s first residents throughout the day leading up to the just be snatching people and carrying on and tearofficial protest since the death of George Floyd. protest worried that she and the people she brought gassing people. It was just ridiculous.”

Ottley’s “Justice Walk” served as the antithesis of would stir unrest in the well-to-do neighborhood, She pointed out that, earlier that Monday, police Friday night’s Beatties Ford Road protest, as she held but she was pleasantly surprised at the reception. shut down the entire SouthPark Mall and parts it in south Charlotte’s Myers Park. One of Charlotte’s “I didn’t know how we were going to be received,” of surrounding neighborhoods for a protest that oldest and wealthiest neighborhoods, Myers Park she told Queen City Nerve a couple hours after the attracted only a couple dozen people. was built in 1911 and was the first to implement

“They thought that there was going to be some action there and then they shut down that neighborhood pretty much. They protected those people but they didn’t protect Beatties Ford Road. They had people out there [on Friday] with [AR15s] and all types of nonsense and they left that neighborhood wide open and vulnerable for those people to do whatever they wanted, and they came in and they did it,” she said, referencing the presence of heavily armed Boogaloo Boys at the Friday protest. “If you’re going to protect some neighborhoods, you need to protect them all.” For Ottley, the ongoing protests following George Floyd’s death remain about cultivating the movement by welcoming newcomers and teaching them why it’s important to stand against police brutality and harassment. As for Williams, who was on the streets every night of the weekend taking tear gas, went to jail on Friday, and marched peacefully through Myers Park on Monday, she said she’s optimistic that the widespread protests will bring change, even though she’s disheartened that it had to come to this. “I hope that black people are able to PHOTO BY RYAN PITKIN take their seats as full citizens of this country, that our rights discontinue being diminished just because of the color of our skin, that we are seen as full participants in this society, and treated as full participants in this society, not second-class citizens,” Williams said. “I’m very saddened that this is what we have to do in order to see a change. We can’t just have a democracy where change is representative of all the people in the room, and not just the voice of a few. I wish Black people had more access to the democratic process.”

RPITKIN@QCNERVE.COM

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY Charlotte filmmakers depict beauty and horror in Appalachia

BY LIZ LOGAN

The scene is quiet, save for the lilting instrumental music swaying in the background. An aerial shot pans the Appalachian Mountains, just above the clouds. A creek reflects the sky overhead and a tree canopy comes into view. Shots of beauty, ambiance and peace are the goal of the artistic yet horrifying film Among Mountain Crags.

Erin and Kyle Frederick, sisters who bounce between Charlotte, Los Angeles and New York City, have together created a film that is as surprising and dark as it is lovely. Set in a nondescript town in Appalachia in an indecipherable era, this film is the result of a years-long conceptualization, a crew of just a handful and a minimal budget raised through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. Now the film has found its way to multiple film festivals where its been highly praised, and can currently be streamed on Amazon and other platforms.

As a senior at NYU studying French, with classes in acting and screenwriting, Erin began working on what would become Among Mountain Crags. Her sister, Kyle, had an undergraduate degree in art history and an MFA from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. After some work on what was then just a school project, Erin sent the original draft to Kyle, who began to chisel away at it with a producer’s eye.

Kyle aimed to make the film more cinematic, while keeping in mind there would be no budget for visual effects to “trick the audience,” into feeling one way or another, as she put it. There were lots of drafts, lots of back and forth, lots of workshopping, with the end goal of making a film good enough to enter the festival circuit.

To feel a bit more connected to the film and thus have a better overall understanding for filming, Kyle began to write more and add her own perspective. Her additions to the script were colored by her own relationships and how women often deal with strangers.

Among Mountain Crags is a cautionary tale, one to leave town via mountain trails, carrying next to that’s relatable for women who have had experiences nothing, is cause enough for concern. But as the two with subtle manipulation — letting themselves meander through the mountains, the stranger’s true believe in love before finding that a hidden nature slowly begins to show, resulting in side exists beneath a charming a sinister shift from what the film facade. Protagonist Coralie WOMEN initially leads you to believe is a tale of growth, Whitt, played by HAVE redemption and love. Erin, is a teacher in her small COMPLETELY What’s scary about this movie mountain town. DIFFERENT (aside from, The handful of school EXPERIENCES THAN you know, murder) is that children she MEN. WE NEED MORE it could (and teaches seem to have little HORROR FROM A FEMALE does) happen to women all respect for her, revealing with snide remarks PERSPECTIVE. -Erin Frederick, writer, the time. Film and television promote the tired h e a v y - w e i g h i n g Among Mountain view that women family secrets. When a mysterious stranger comes Crags long only for love and, as women, when faced with through town, Coralie is drawn to this ever-repeating plot line in him, eventually deciding to leave with him books, on screen and in societal pressures on foot to begin their lives together. expressed in the, “So are you seeing anyone?” probes That the two meet and almost instantly decide that are repeated throughout a lifelong cycle, it’s no

KYLE AND ERIN FREDERICK (LEFT TO RIGHT) PHOTO BY STEVE NAYLOR wonder some can become too quick to trust.

The scant dialogue in this film is in the same vein as Blow the Man Down, another female-forward story about seemingly safe men taking advantage of young women — though the twists are quite different. This stylistic choice to let the story tell itself, guided by a haunting soundtrack, was intended to give the viewer a chance to become entranced alongside Coralie, lending itself to the sinking reality that women are taught to follow men before their own instincts.

“Women have completely different experiences than men,” Erin said. “We need more horror from a female perspective. The beauty of the whole project is that no one knows it’s a thriller. It’s supposed to be dreamy and painterly, which are not typical stylistic choices for horror.”

If I’m going to sit down and watch a movie— which, let’s face it, is far more commonplace now than it may have been in, say, February— I’m going to skip right over horror every time. I have no space in my life for nightmares. And yet, for the sake of research, I logged into Amazon and sat in the brightness of day to watch their final product.

I’ve known Kyle and Erin for awhile, which is likely the only reason I broke my self-imposed mandate against horror films to watch their flick. They are both incredibly hilarious and well-versed in thirdwave coffee, having each had stints managing the

Charlotte chain Not Just Coffee. Between the two of them, they’ve managed to follow their goals to fruition: create a film, promote their work and make a few jumps in the indie film festival circuit. It’s shocking to see two quiet, intensely stylish women producing intentional, low-budget horror.

As a society, we’ve still got this idea that horror is a man’s genre, which certainly played a role in Erin’s original choice to veer in this direction and Kyle’s choice to produce. “I’d seen men do it,” Kyle said of leaving her job in Charlotte to pursue directing on the West Coast,

“and not just in horror. They’d work on short films and move on to features, but in L.A., this seems to only work for men. So why is it not happening for women?” Kyle posed this question almost rhetorically, but subtly challenges it through her own work, making it happen for herself even when surrounded primarily by male colleagues in a male-dominated field. Kyle started her journey in a small class of about 50 aspiring filmmakers, only six of whom were women. It was easy to see how blatantly disproportionate the representation was from the get-go. Despite their deep awareness that they were few among many, Kyle and Erin were not hell-bent

on making Among Mountain Crags a female-driven story with female-driven crew (their third sister became an intense boom operator). They did not to provide the vibe and tone they were going for. He began sending melodies he’d created separate for each character. They then worked with a North Carolina-based sound designer to tie it all together.

And then the two were ready to submit for festivals.

distribution, which set them up on platforms such as Amazon Prime. The film is also available on YouTube for a humble $1.99.

“We’ve had great responses so far. For us, streaming was the best fit,” Kyle said. “We felt it most important to reach people who would resonate with the film. We want to get it in front of as many people as possible and people are watching it multiple times.

want to make a female film for the sake of making a female film.

“I didn’t want to be a good female film maker,” Erin said. “I just wanted to be a good filmmaker.”

Kyle and Erin wanted to produce a movie people wanted to see, something that would resonate with a specific crowd. They wanted to tell a story so many are unfortunately familiar with.

After the two finalized their screenplay, held auditions and secured “found locations,” they began filming in the North Carolina mountains and parts of West Virginia. The scenes take place in locations that were set up as-is — how they look in the film is how they look in real life, including a portion shot in a coal-mining museum. Over the course of 18 days, the crew became like a tight-knit family, weaving a film together on little funds.

The editing process was stretched across the country, with Kyle’s colleague working on editing from L.A., and color design coming from Company 3 (which is, as Kyle said, “a big deal in the color correction world”).

Back in North Carolina, Charlotte’s own Tanner Morita (of Hex Coffee) created the instrumental soundtrack. The Fredericks provided Morita with picture-locked still shots and other soundtracks

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A STILL FROM ‘AMONG MOUNTAIN CRAGS.’

In 2018, the film was selected among a handful of others for the Montana Film Festival (MFF). The mountain setting was a perfect fit for MFF, which ran other similar films similar, among those were Little Woods as well as Wildfire, a film starring Carrie Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal, each dark and heavy in their own rite.

The feedback for Among Mountain Crags was consistent: beautiful, haunting. A reviewer from the Montana Film Festival had this to say: “Although Among Mountain Crags was more than likely conceived before the #MeToo Movement had its moment, it seems like a thriller for our times and with a lot to say about feminism, the patriarchy, and sexual abuse/assault. At the same time, it’s a classic suspense tale that leans on the spooky mood and ambiance of Appalachia while clocking in at just over an hour.”

Two other festivals screened the film, including our city’s own Charlotte Film Festival. The Fredericks wanted to see the movie come full circle — to be shown on the big screen in a town they’d at various times called home.

The siblings soon met Shawn Flannigan, a film distribution rep that works specifically with independent filmmakers, and began working with him. With his help, they landed with Indie Rights film

“Although,” Kyle added, “we have no idea what the analytics actually are at this point.”

The obvious question here is, what’s next? To see a film from inception over the course of many years has been incredibly satisfying, the duo says. As of now, they simply hope to push their film farther internationally, banking on the universal theme the film conveys.

The two do have a few things up their sleeves. They’re currently planning some projects apart from one another, so don’t expect them to become the next Coen brothers. Kyle is writing a dystopian fiction while Erin is delving into sci-fi.

Erin is looking to dive more into the acting field, while admitting that it’s “hard to wrap my head around what’s possible this next year,” given the unsure state of things surrounding COVID-19. Though if there’s one thing the virus has ensured for our future, it’s that dystopian sci-fi won’t be far from everyone’s mind moving forward.

CINEMATOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL PATRICK O’LEARY