All farming takes a certain resilience -- the constant threat of damaging weather; uncertainties of the market; raging fuel costs -- and tobacco farmers add a flour sack of worries onto that already heavy bundle.

The demand for U.S. tobacco is at a historic low, in no small part due to increasing awareness of its deadly health risks.

While most folks don't put big tobacco executives and those who farm the crop in the same category, tobacco growing doesn't garner the respect it once did.

"Literally, they're being told they're drug dealers," said Jim Crawford.

Crawford, a 54-year-old carpenter, cultural geographer and musician who lives in Roanoke, will premiere his documentary about Virginia tobacco farmers, "Down in the Old Belt: Voices from the Tobacco South," at the Grandin Theatre on Wednesday, at Danville Community College on Friday and at Virginia's Explore Park on Sunday.

Tobacco's bad rap, he found, has left some tobacco farmers hesitant to talk to the media. At the same time, others were eager to tell their stories and to talk about the tornado of change they can't seem to escape.

Crawford gained their trust with a secret weapon: a good ear.

"I think people, if they see someone is genuinely wanting to find out about them, they become very talkative," Crawford said.

Willie Thompson of Danville considers Crawford a friend. "Me and him talked a lot here," the 82-year-old tobacco farmer said. "He knew how to talk to me ... I told him the truth about how I came up and came along."

One of the film's most powerful moments comes when Thompson chokes back tears while talking about how he wishes he could read.

"If I had an education it would mean a lot to me, and I know it would, but since I don't have any education I am doing the best that I can," Thompson says. "I gets a letter, I can't read it. I have to take it to my wife, and I take it to my friends. I have got a lot of white friends and if the letter ain't right, he tells me don't sign it, let him have it and he will handle it for me. And by him doing that, I have been making it so far without an education."

Thompson's revelation is only one of several scenes where tobacco farmers bare raw emotions.

"You don't get that unless you spend years with them," said Crawford.

Crawford put in eight years making more than 200 trips to Southside Virginia to get his story.

"Down in the Old Belt" begins with the history of tobacco, which runs parallel with the history of Virginia.

The movie starts at Jamestown and follows the timeline to tobacco's price-control program, which began in the 1930s.

It includes interviews with farmers and descendents of farmers talking about the importance of family on a tobacco farm and the fun of the tobacco market.

Crawford, who does not smoke, carefully avoids putting an artificially shiny veneer on the tobacco life, though. He interviews an anthropologist and historians about how Virginia's tobacco farms led to slavery. He points out that tobacco-growing regions had higher rates of poverty and illiteracy.

"My intention is to capture and describe the tobacco culture," he said.

It took $48,000 to get the film done. Of that, $15,000 came out of his own bank account. "I haven't paid myself in years," he said.

Crawford and his wife, Cathy, get by on what she makes as a landscaper. He cheerfully describes himself as a pauper.

Money has never seemed to be Crawford's prime interest. He spent six months sailing the South Pacific; he traveled to Belize to study the native Garifuna community; and he wrote a cultural study of the community of Bottom Creek in the southeastern corner of Montgomery County.

When Jim and Cathy married in 1996, they sealed the deal by bicycling across the United States.

Then, it was on to the next adventure: studying the history of tobacco farming while simultaneously trying to figure out the whole filmmaking thing.

"It always amazes me," Cathy said. "He'll jump into things he doesn't know."

Jim Crawford, who sometimes works as an adjunct geography professor at Virginia Tech, persuaded the school's visual and broadcast communications staff to take on videography and post-production work.

Tech cinematographer Dan Mirolli blanched at taking much credit for the film, though, instead changing the subject back to Crawford.

"He did a great job," said Mirolli. "It's an important piece of history."

Crawford hadn't expected that making the film would consume so much of his life, but he always knew he'd finish it.

In 2001, he dreamed he attended the documentary's premiere. He heard a song off its soundtrack in the dream and jumped out of bed at 2 a.m. to grab his guitar and go to work on the music he'd heard.

"Bright Leaf" is one of six songs Crawford composed for "Down in the Old Belt."

He asked musician friends Stacy Hobbs and members of the Celtibillies to contribute to the soundtrack.

Crawford hopes to sell "Down in the Old Belt" to a channel like Discovery that would be able to pay him what he believes the documentary deserves.

"I'm sure every filmmaker thinks that," he said. "You've got to have hope."

Crawford quickly adds a bit of advice from a friend: "Hope is not a business plan."

Right now, Crawford is focusing on the two premieres, which are intentionally set to coincide with tobacco harvest time.

"I told him I'll be there," Thompson said of the Danville event.

Thompson doesn't want to get in front of the crowd at the screening. "I have never tried to explain nothing too much," he said.

He's glad someone helped him tell his story, though. He's proud of the life he built on the tobacco farm. "We're making it pretty good," he said of himself and his wife.