The Longest Ride (2015)

A beautiful story set in the hills of rural North Carolina.  The characters make full use of the beauty around them.  They pause to note the mountains with light fog settling among the trees.  The swim in the mountains ponds,  They drive down the tree lined roads.  They appreciate the open porch as a place to sit and contemplate it all.  The camera is actively laying the ruralness of North Carolina before you.  The heavy thunderstorm plays important roles in meaningful places. The urban-rural contrast forms a crucial factor in the plot.  In all a movie and story intimately connected to the landscape.

The plot involves a young couple, she attending Wake-Forest University and he a bull riding champion.  He loves the farm and the rural life while she is of art galleries, which are of the urban place.  He lives on a farm set in the middle of all this rural beauty, yet facing loss by financial pressures.  She is ready to move to New York City with a position assured her in the art gallery field selling painting he finds silly to people with full wallets.

According to IMDb, he filming locations were Generally in North Carolina, with the bull riding be done in Winston-Salem and Jacksonville, North Carolina.  There is one flashback sequence on Caswell Beach, North Carolina.  This area is part of the Piedmont stretching west to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Of special note is Black Mountain College which flourished from 1933 until closure in 1957.  Black Mountain College was an experimental college that was faculty owned and run.  It followed a full participation model of education as all worked on the campus and maintained it.  Art was seen as an important part of campus life and the movie takes advantage of that theme.  A number of important modern artists stayed at the college.  It was supported as part of the WPA system in the Depression.

Sources
Black Mountain College.  2015.  Black Mountain College Museum and Art Center.  Online. http://www.blackmountaincollege.org/history

IMDb.  2015.  The Longest Ride.  Online.  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2726560/locations?ref_=ttfc_sa_5