Her Hope Haven
Genre: Scripted Narrative
Synopsis:
Her Hope Haven is a comedy-drama about a group of women
working the steps toward their sobriety. Set in a women’s inpatient
recovery center in Charleston, WV, Her Hope Haven is a place where women are given a chance to get their kids back, their dignity back, stay out of jail, and stay alive. Their stories are more complex than only their addiction. Against the odds of societal expectations and the money-making business of recovery, the women seek redemption through small stories of levity, euphoria, and heartbreak. The women persevere through working together, and at times against one another, to keep their sobriety as they build bonds with one another during the hardest time of their lives. It's not about the addiction, it’s about the recovery. Co-created, co-written, and performed by women with lived experience in active addiction and recovery.
Credits:
Director: Tijah Bumgarner
Writer: Ashley Ellis
Writer: Tijah Bumgarner
Producer: Tijah Bumgarner
Producer: Jena Seiler
Key Cast “Rachel”: Lauren
Key Cast “Lisa”: Kate Grubb
Director Bio:
Tijah Bumgarner (b. 1983, West Virginia, USA) is a filmmaker and professor. She is the co-creator, co-writer, director of Her Hope Haven. She teaches film production and journalism at Marshall University. Bumgarner holds a BFA in film/video from the California Institute of the Arts and an MA in Media Studies from West Virginia State University. As a doctoral candidate at Ohio University, her dissertation “Examining the Ground: Shifting Narratives in Post-Coal Appalachia,” explores how extraction is narrativized. Bumgarner’s experience growing up in West Virginia has inspired much of her work. In 2017, Bumgarner completed her first feature film, Meadow Bridge, a coming-of-age narrative set in rural West Virginia. Currently, she is working on various collaborative film projects with artist Jena Seiler, including the feature documentary, Picture Proof. In both scholarship and practice, Bumgarner seeks to disrupt stereotypes that conform to a single defining narrative of Appalachia.