The stretch of land covering Southside Virginia, where the sun and soil are right, has grown a popular, mild tobacco for centuries. In 1998, Jim Crawford planted his video camera there, and a documentary bloomed.

Completed in 2005, the Roanoker and cultural geographer’s first film is the story of Virginia tobacco and the people who grew it, titled “Down in the Old Belt: Voices from the Tobacco South.”

The documentary opens at Jamestown and traces the crop through history and households to the recent threat of foreign tobacco. Crawford, a nonsmoker, drove 80,000 miles to collect interviews and earn the trust of reticent farmers.

“It was a hard life” for them, he said, referring to hail storms and early frosts. “Yet everybody you talk to remembers it fondly.”

Now, Crawford’s film — which has been screened in the area — has made television. Half of the country’s public television stations have picked it up and will be showing it in the coming months.

Roanoke’s WBRA (Channel 15) airs “Down in the Old Belt” at 11 p.m. Sunday.

— Pete Dybdahl