Folk singer Jimmy Driftwood called the Buffalo River “Arkansas’s gift to the nation—America’s gift to the world.” It was the first national river to be designated in the United States (1972).

The Buffalo Flows is a one-hour documentary film written and produced by two-time Emmy award–winning filmmaker Larry Foley, professor of journalism at the University of Arkansas. Academy Award winner Ray McKinnon narrates. Internationally known as an outstanding canoe stream, this 135-mile river, free of dams, is so much more, and the film captures what is protected.

The story is about the bluffs and the trees, the flowers and the birds, and the giant elk. It’s about hiking and floating and camping and fishing. And it’s also about the people who make their homes in Buffalo River country year round, and have for generations. Driftwood describes it as a “painting that hangs on a mountain, glimmering there in the sun, to show that the people have won.”

The film will premiere on AETN in winter 2009. Later in the year it will be shown in conjunction with Ken Burns’s “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” Bonus features: music video with an original song and “Buffalo River,” a film by Neil Compton, the man who led the fight to save the Buffalo as a free-flowing stream.