Sons & Daughters of Thunder is finding another audience in churches with screening events popping up in a variety of locations in the Midwest, including St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa on Tuesday, November 9th at 7pm.
This summer Sons & Daughters of Thunder received The Power of Voice Award at the Over-the-Rhine International Film Festival in Cincinnati, Ohio where film reviewer Ed McNaulty first saw the film. For over 30 years he has been publishing film reviews, study guides and books that explore the inspiring connections between faith and popular culture. We share a portion of his film review of Thunder below, and encourage you to click through to read it in its entirety.
We are humbled and grateful for this insightful evaluation of Sons & Daughters of Thunder and applaud every single person involved in the production.
Tammy & Kelly Rundle, Fourth Wall Films
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"This is an earnest and rewarding docudrama shedding light on the origins of one of the most influential novels in American history..." ~Ed McNulty, film reviewer for VISUAL PARABLES.
Director Kelly Rundle’s film about the students’ debates in 1834 over slavery at Cincinnati’s Lane Seminary is based on the play by Earlene Hawley and Curtiss Heeter. I knew I would like this film at its very beginning when right before the front titles abolitionist Frederick Douglas (played by Mark Winn) is shown delivering his famous July 4th speech at Rochester NY in 1852. Best known as “What to the Slave is the 4th of July,” the long oration* is a polite but scathing indictment of what today we call systemic racism. This Jeremiad bookends the film, a slightly longer portion concluding it.
Also, as an alumnus of McCormick Theological Seminary and recipient of a Lane Scholarship, I was keenly interested in the film’s setting, the newly established Lane Seminary in the river boat town. When Lane went out of existence, the Chicago-based McCormick received most of its assets. The earlier seminary never recovered from the student rebellion and ceased operations in 1932.
Read the rest of Ed McNulty's film review at Visual Parables.
Based on the play by Earlene Hawley and Curtis Heeter, the film tells the unforgettable true story of the first-in-the-nation 1834 emancipation debates led by firebrand abolitionist Theodore Weld (Thomas Alan Taylor) in Cincinnati, Ohio, and their effect on a young Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (Jessica Taylor) views of slavery.
The film was co-produced by Kelly & Tammy Rundle of Fourth Wall Films and Kent Hawley, and Executive Producer Kimberly Kurtenbach. Award-winning cinematographer Kevin Railsback served as the Director of Photography.
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 (co-produced with WQPT).
To order any of Fourth Wall Films documentaries or film projects on DVD or view them via streaming, visit SHOP FOURTH WALL FILMS.
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