New Documentary on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Transformative Ohio Years airs on WQPT-PBS

Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe, a new documentary by Mid-America Emmy® nominated filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films, will air on WQPT February 9 at 9:30 p.m. The 30-minute film includes scenes from the Rundles’ docudrama Sons & Daughters of Thunder featuring Jessica Taylor as Harriet Beecher Stowe, and numerous other acclaimed actors from the Quad Cities region.

Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe explores the writer’s life in Cincinnati, Ohio and how those life-changing experiences contributed to her best-selling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Beecher-Stowe lived in Cincinnati between 1832 and 1850, and just after her move to Maine, she adapted her Ohio experiences and anti-slavery sentiment into America’s most influential novel.

“We are very pleased that Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe will have its broadcast premiere on WQPT during Black History Month,” said producer Tammy Rundle.

The documentary features interviews with Joan Hedrick, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life”; Philip McFarland, author of “The Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe”; historians Chris DeSimio, Christine Anderson, Ph.D., John E. Douglass, Ph.D.; John Getz, Ph.D., and Michelle Watts, Ph.D.

Production took place in Cincinnati, Piqua and Ripley, Ohio; Maysville, Kentucky; Litchfield and Hartford, Connecticut; Brunswick, Maine and Andover, Massachusetts.

The documentary project received a major grant from Ohio Humanities, a State affiliate of The National Endowment for the Humanities.  Friends of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House served as the fiscal sponsor for the grant.

The Rundles’ docudrama Sons & Daughters of Thunder, which tells the unforgettable true story of the awakening of Harriet Beecher Stowe to the horrors of slavery, and the beginning of the end of slavery in America, will air on WQPT at 8:00 p.m., followed by Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Fourth Wall Films is an Emmy® nominated and award-winning independent film and video production company formerly located in Los Angeles, and now based in Moline, Illinois.  Fourth Wall Films focuses on telling Midwestern stories through historical documentary films that reach viewers via PBS broadcasts, theaters, film festivals, national DVD release and online streaming.

Other award-winning Fourth Wall Films productions include Country School: One Room - One Nation, Good Earth: Awakening the Silent City, The Barn Raisers, Letters Home to Hero Street (with WQPT-PBS), River to River: Iowa’s Forgotten Highway 6, Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg (with McMarr, LTD.), Villisca: Living with a Mystery, Good Earth: Awakening the Silent City, The Amish Incident, and the Lost Nation: The Ioway film series.