"Whites"

The documentary, directed by Julien Nitzberg, follows the legacy of the White family of Boone County, West Virginia. Their most famous living member is Jesco White, star of the 1991 cult documentary hit "Dancing Outlaw" (on which Nitzberg was associate producer).

The Appalachian clan is notorious for criminal activity and reckless, larger-than-life characters. They tap-dance, shoot and stab people (including each other), and sell (and do) a lot of drugs. Think "Sopranos" meets "Coal Miner's Daughter."

Family patriarch D. Ray White, murdered in 1985, is a dancing legend and folk hero in these parts. He was profiled in the PBS documentary "Talking Feet," and was a master at inventing clever scams to counter "company town" corruption and poverty: he is said to have had his entire family declared mentally ill, to collect government aid funds.

Hank Williams III appears in "Whites" to back Jesco up on musical numbers, and celebrates the clan as "true rebels of the South." Director Nitzberg describes the film as "a portrait of American 'badassdom' at its best."

The Whites are the product of an environment in which mountains are literally sawed off, sliced open like great stuffed cakes, to extract the coal they contain. These Appalachian hills haven't been so much mined as mowed.

Who survives this? What will remain when all the mountains are flattened, and all the coal's gone?

Probably, the Whites.

Thanks Xeni!