Nashville Rises Documentary
by Holly Marie
Tong
 At the beginning of May
2010, our very own Music City USA experi-enced
over 13 inches of rain in a two hour period. The
flood was unques-tionably deemed as the worst
disaster in Nashville history. Rather than
wondering who was affected by the disaster, it
was more of a question of who wasn?t. Either
directly or indi-rectly, nearly every Nashville
resi-dent felt and still feels the pain, the loss
and the tur-moil in one way or another. The flood
waters de-stroyed countless homes, businesses,
and anything in its path robbing numerous people
of their shelters and livelihoods. When such a
tragedy occurs, the options of how one can
respond are basically limited to two choices: you
can either let it defeat you or you can rise up
and help your neighbors. Thankfully Nashville
residents chose the second option living up to
their title of the “Volunteer State.”
Volunteers rolled up their sleeves and got down
on their hands and knees helping people they had
never met until that moment. Others decided to
give necessities such as food, cloth-ing and
other monetary donations.
 Zac Adams of Sky-dive
Films who had previously worked with Mark
Slaughter (of the Band Slaugh-ter) called him up
one night with an idea. Together Ad-ams
(writer/director), Slaughter and Cameron Carrier
would co-produce a non-profit documentary called
“Nashville Rises.” Cody Westheimer
served as the composer, while Bill Cornelius took
on the responsibility as the director of
photography and Luke Dye was the editor. As soon
as Hollywood star Billy Bob Thornton heard about
the project, he readily wanted to help and became
the nar-rator. As the group collaborated they
watched their goal unfold as the story of
“Nashville Rises” is one of
“triumph and the never drifting human
spirit.”
Just like the Pro-Nashville and generosity
message of the film itself, many organizations
and people gave their time to the making of this
film further living up to the foundational
purpose of this project. Residents stepped up
donating photos that could be used. While
watching the film you will also recognize some
Nash-ville locals such as Mayor Karl Dean,
country singer Julie Roberts, Charlie Chase of
the Crook and Chase Show, Belinda Gentry, Joe
Hrasna and GAC?s Nan Kelley as they are
interviewed.
Zac and Mark agree that the film came together
naturally as it was unscripted and they feel that
it wrote itself. They wanted every scene to have
a purpose and a story and never before seen
pictures and video footage helped make this
hap-pen. Through the outpour of volun-teerism and
the utilizing of connec-tions, they amazingly
worked to make an epic film without money. In
fact, any money made on the film will go directly
to charity to benefit flood victims. From talking
to Adams and Slaughter, it was very obvious how
much this genuinely means to them as they are
very humbled and thankful to have produced this
inspiring project.
 They emphasize that it
is a very honest film simply educating and
raising awareness of this amazing city that we
are living in. It helps to validate the reasoning
for the fact that so many artists live here of
all genres and why we are the music community
that we are. This documentary is currently
receiving a great deal of promotion and attention
around our city and also nationally as it truly
features and captures the very essence of what we
are all about as a community. Im-pressively, this
documentary will be making its debut at several
film festivals. This highly anticipated film has
just premiered and has been shown in several
lo-cations. Excitedly Nashville Rises just was
awarded the Ground Zero Spirit Award for Best
Documentary Short at the Nashville Film Festival.
In addition, “Nashville Rises” will be
airing on PBS towards late summer.
www.nashvillerisesmovie.com
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