ONLINE | Social Change Through Storytelling: On Building Relationships, Trust and Stakeholder Networks
ABOUT THE EVENT:
What does it take to harness the power of media to drive social change? How do we design and implement a social impact campaign? Join Emmy and Peabody award-winning filmmaker, Beth Levison and Impact Strategist, Alice Quinlan, Co-Founder and Partner at Red Owl, who will discuss how they engaged networks and mobilized communities to raise awareness about the relationship between democracy and local journalism with their campaign for the documentary, STORM LAKE.Â
Nominated for a 2021 Peabody Award, STORM LAKE by Jerry Risius and Beth Levison tells the story of a newspaper, a family, and a community. It highlights the struggle to keep a community business and local newspaper, The Storm Lake Times. alive. Helmed by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Art Cullen, whose editorials challenged powerful corporate agricultural interests in small-town Iowa, is now wrestling with local journalism’s slow death and its threat to democracy. The story centers on Art and his family’s commitment to unite and inform their growing muti-ethnic and multicultural Iowan community of farmers and migrant workers.Â
“Fascinating…a portrait of American resilience and unity through fractious times” — The Hollywood Reporter
ABOUT OUR PANELISTS
BETH LEVISON
Beth Levison is an award-winning producer/director based in NYC. Most recently, she executive produced GRAND THEFT HAMLET (SXSW 2024 Grand Jury Prize winner for Best Documentary Film) and produced A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY (True/False 2024). Her 2022 producing effort, THE MARTHA MITCHELL EFFECT, premiered at Sundance, launched on Netflix, and was nominated for a 2023 Academy Award (Best Documentary Short), while STORM LAKE, which she directed alongside DP Jerry Risius and also produced (Independent Lens, 2022), was shortlisted by the IDA as one of the best films of 2021. Other producing credits include Emmy-nominated MADE IN BOISE (Independent Lens, 2020), Emmy-nominated PERSONAL STATEMENT (PBS, 2018), and 32 PILLS (HBO, 2017). Levison is the founder of Hazel Pictures, a co-founder of the Documentary Producers Alliance, teaching faculty with Sarah Lawrence College, and a member of the Academy.
ALICE QUINLAN
Alice Quinlan is an impact and engagement producer with more than ten years of experience using storytelling to drive social change. As a Partner and Co-Founder at Red Owl, she leads campaigns with responsive strategies and an eye for creative partnerships and community-based work. Previously, as the Director of Community Engagement and Education at POV, Alice developed national engagement campaigns for POV documentaries, produced resources around POV’s features, shorts and digital projects, and facilitated hundreds of free screenings nationwide every year with her team. Prior to joining POV in 2014, she founded the KRTS Youth Media Project in Marfa, TX, a part of PBS Student Reporting Labs. Alice is the director of programming at the Dome House, a community space and studio in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, which seeks to provide artists of all mediums with space for creativity, contemplation and wonder.
Moderated by Jen Van Der Meer and Neyda Martinez. Produced by Justyna Kedra.