DOC - Clifftop

Documentary Feature

Title: Clifftop

TRT: N/A

Project Status: In Postproduction

Logline 

On a West Virginia mountaintop, thousands of musicians gather for the Appalachian String Band Music Festival, better known as Clifftop. There, days stretch and nights collapse into sound, and through a series of quiet, drifting encounters, an immersive portrait emerges of how music erodes the distance between strangers and gives shape to a fleeting but deeply felt community.

Synopsis

Coming together across differences and geography, over 3000 people from all 50 states and over 20 different countries return every year to a West Virginian summit known as Clifftop, at Camp Washington Carver, to play, feel, learn and preserve a style of music that belongs to everyone, Old Time. Sheltered under individual campsites united in constellations, a never-ending conversation of music reaches long into the morning until the air itself hums.
At its heart, Clifftop organically weaves together the experiences, lives, and musical conversations of a series of characters whose lives intersect on this hill. Punks jam ferociously until dawn. Folks arrive from rural towns, drawn by the same songs that once rattled their grandparents’ porches. This community carve out temporary homes beneath the trees. An emotional arc naturally forms over the course of the festival’s 10 long summer days as participants form a living archive of Old Time, and build an enduring community.
This film preserves a unique cultural moment. We’ll sit together in the glow of lanterns, trance in the thrums of late-night jams, and breathe the quiet dawns with music suspended in the fog among the trees. The natural world is part of the score: the sigh of a creek, tree frogs and buzzing insects, echoes of melodies bouncing between tents, hills, and ridges. We’ll cradle with stubborn insistence that traditions survive not because they lay in amber, but because they are lived by whoever shows up with an instrument and desire to play and learn.

Additional Project Info

“— it’s just one big lonesome mountaintop without the people.” BOBBY TAYLOR, festival co-founder

Following in the footsteps of classics like Jazz on a Summer’s Day and The High Lonesome Sound, our film is the first feature-length documentary to capture Clifftop. The film originated in 2021 in conversation between producer Lyle Werner—a Midwest-born, New Orleans-based fiddler and longtime Clifftop attendee— with award-winning filmmaker Adam Sekuler and longtime friend and co-director Varvara Degtiarenko. After a moving solo fiddle performance at New Orleans’ Studio In The Woods, Werner reflected on Clifftop’s trance-like magic and its importance in shaping his musical journey, identity, and community.

Production began in 2023 and 2024 with support from University of Michigan grants and self-financing. As the team prepares for its most ambitious stages they remain deeply committed to collaboration with the Clifftop community. Advisors such as festival co-founder Will Carter and photographer Stephen Brightwell, along with local musicians and historians, play an active role in shaping the film’s direction, casting, and cultural grounding—making it a truly community-built story.

Team

Adam Sekuler and Varvara Degtiarenko

Financials

$40,000 grants from University of Michigan

Seeking

We’re coming to the Breakthrough Marketplace looking for partners who are as excited by sensory, immersive storytelling as we are. Right now, we’re primarily focused on securing financing and finishing funds to get us through the final stretch of post-production. This includes the capital needed to master our unique "natural score" and polish our visual aesthetic to the highest professional standards, as well as covering the submission fees necessary to launch a robust international festival run.

Beyond the technical finish, we are also looking for producing partners and a production company with a track record in high-end independent documentaries. We’d love to find collaborators who can help us navigate the festival circuit and secure the right distribution—whether that’s theatrical or curated streaming, to ensure this film finds its global audience. Finally, we’re seeking support for one last shoot to capture those final, crucial moments of the Clifftop cycle, ensuring the narrative is as complete and visceral as the music itself. If you're a producer who values sensory cinema and stories about deep cultural resilience, we’d love to talk.

Rights Available

All rights

Contact

Adam Sekuler

asekuler@umich.edu

612-229-3205