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Storm Lake
October 8, 2023 @ 2:00 pm - 4:30 pm
The Western Illinois Museum announces the next film in the Not So Easy Film Series. The documentary film Storm Lake directed by Jerry Risius and Beth Levison will be screened on Friday, October 6th at 7:00 pm and Sunday, October 8th at 2:00 pm at the Museum. Local media personalities will be on hand to participate in the discussion following the screening, including Community News Brief owner Lynne Campbell on Friday and Tri States Public Radio’s News Director Rich Egger on Sunday. There is a suggested $5 donation at the door.
As nearly 2,000 local papers have shuttered in the last 20 years, Storm Lake looks at the challenges of access to credible journalism in small, often rural towns. The film features Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Art Cullen and his family who fight to unite and inform their rural Iowan farming community through their biweekly newspaper, The Storm Lake Times—even as the paper hangs on by a thread. Twice a week, they work as civic watchdogs to protect their hometown and the legacy of credible journalism, at large—come hell or pandemic. The film’s director and Iowa native Jerry Risius stated that the idea for the documentary came out of reading Art Cullen’s paper and related to its rural Iowan voice; “…this at a time when local perspectives are seldom heard. Once I started to spend time with Art, I came to appreciate not only his own challenges as a newspaperman but those of his tight-knit family.”
The Not So Easy Film Series has been created for those who have questions that don’t have easy answers. Through the power of cinema, the selected films share another point of view and offer insights about issues that are challenging to understand, elude solutions, or sometimes even to imagine. The films in the series hold the potential to move us toward a more nuanced understanding of the world around us -even if we still don’t know the answer to those hard questions.
The November films in the Not So Easy Film Series will be Paper Tigers and will be screened on Friday, November 3rd at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, November 5th at 2:00 p.m.
This program is funded in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Additional funding was provided by a grant from the Illinois Humanities, with funds from the State of Illinois American Rescue Plan Act.
The Western Illinois Museum is located at 201 S. Lafayette Street, one block south of Macomb’s Courthouse Square. For more information, call the Museum at 309.837.2750, text 309.837.2613, or email info@wimuseum.org. More details and updates can be found on the Museum’s social media channels.
About the Filmmakers
Jerry Risius | Director + DP
With over 25 years experience as DP on such projects as The Kingmaker (Toronto Int’l Film Festival 2019), Generation Wealth (Sundance 2018), Seeing Allred (Sundance 2018/Netflix), Brave New Voices (HBO 2009), The Devil Came on Horseback (Sundance 2007), and more recently, as a Field Producer/DP on Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and Parts Unknown series, Brooklyn-based Jerry Risius grew up on a hog farm about an hour from Storm Lake and brings a depth of filmmaking experience along with a local perspective that very few can.
Beth Levison | Director + Producer
Beth Levison is an Emmy and Peabody-winning producer/director based in NYC. Her most recent producing efforts include Women in Blue (Tribeca Film Festival 2020/Independent Lens) and Emmy-nominated Made in Boise (AFI DOCS 2019/Independent Lens). Previous producing credits include 32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide (HBO 2017), Emmy-nominated Personal Statement (PBS 2018), and her independent directorial/producing debut, Lemon (PBS 2011). Beth is the founder of Hazel Pictures, a co-founder of the Documentary Producers Alliance (DPA), producing faculty with the School of Visual Arts (SVA), and a member of AMPAS.