WQPT-PBS will air two films by award-winning filmmakers Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films on Sunday, February 9th for Black History Month: their first narrative film Sons & Daughters of Thunder at 8:00 p.m., and their new documentary Becoming Harriet Beecher Stowe at 9:30 p.m.
Based on a true story, the docudrama Sons & Daughters of Thunder tells the unforgettable true story of the 1834 Cincinnati, Ohio Lane Theological Seminary anti-slavery debates led by firebrand abolitionist Theodore Weld (played by Thomas Alan Taylor). A young Harriet Beecher’s (played by actress Jessica Taylor) exposure to the debates and Weld's continuing work to free the slaves sparked a flame that led her to write her magnum opus Uncle Tom's Cabin. Sons & Daughters of Thunder is based on a play written by Earlene Hawley and Curtis Heeter.
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. 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.
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.
Fourth Wall Films is an Mid-America 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.
Purchase Sons & Daughters of Thunder on DVD HERE!
Sons & Daughters of Thunder was partially funded by a grant from the Quad City Arts, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, with support from Friends of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation, and the Bix Biederbecke Inn. The Moline Foundation and the Shell Rock Community Historical Society served as the fiscal sponsors on the film project. The film is co-produced by Kelly & Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films and Kent Hawley. Kimberly Kurtenbach is the Executive Producer of the film.
Kelly & Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films are the producers of multiple award-winning historical documentaries and the Mid-America Emmy® nominated documentaries Good Earth: Awakening the Silent City, Country School: One Room – One Nation, River to River: Iowa's Forgotten Highway 6 and Letters Home to Hero Street (with WQPT-PBS).
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