Jonathan Turner
Entertainment Editor
The Dispatch-Argus
Kelly and Tammy Rundle's first docudrama, “Sons & Daughters of Thunder,” will have its world premiere at 6:30 p.m. March 16 at the Putnam Museum National Geographic Giant Screen in Davenport, and then screen in Cincinnati, Ohio at the Garfield Theatre on March 23.
"Sons & Daughters of Thunder” tells the true story of 1834 Lane Seminary debates in Cincinnati. Organized by Theodore Weld, one of the architects of the abolitionist movement, “the shocking oratory sparked intense controversy and awakened a young Harriet Beecher (Stowe) to the horrors of slavery,” according to a Fourth Wall Films release.
Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) went on to pen the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which changed American public opinion in favor of abolition.
Advance tickets for the Putnam premiere will be available starting Feb. 11, at Putnam.org. Tickets are $10 per person and pre-ordering is strongly recommended.
Advance tickets for the Cincinnati, Ohio Garfield Theatre premiere are available HERE!
“The Amish Incident: Rural Conflict & Compromise,” the latest film by Mid-America Emmy-nominated filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Moline, will premiere on WQPT-PBS at 9 p.m. Feb. 10.
When school officials decide to bus Amish children into town schools in November 1965, a newspaper photographer captured an iconic image of kids fleeing from authorities into a nearby cornfield.
The rural Oelwein, Iowa, incident and the photo ignited a firestorm of arrests, fines and controversy leading to a unique precedent-setting covenant between the "Plain People" and the state of Iowa, according to a synopsis of the 26-minute documentary.
“The Amish Incident” weaves interviews with key people with newly discovered archival materials and photos to tell “a fascinating and memorable true tale of rural conflict and compromise,” according to a release from the Rundles' Fourth Wall Films.
“We considered including the Amish incident story in our documentary 'Country School: One Room – One Nation',” said producer Tammy Rundle. “Ultimately we found that it was a complicated and dramatic story that should be explored in a separate film.”
“I go to the Amish community to talk to an Amish patriarch. We’re talking in a room with no lights. There’s no water. There are lanterns around,” Gene Raffensperger, eastern Iowa reporter for the Des Moines Register at the time, says in the new film. “They didn’t have telephones. And he’s talking about the school thing, I never walked into one just like that and I’m saying to myself, ‘My God, this is the jet age colliding with horse and buggy.'”
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