Heroes, Community & Change

Rachel DeCruz, Jeremy Levine and Face2Face host David Peck talk about their new Sundance film The Panola Project, convenience stores, persistent grace, poverty and racism and real change, relationships, and the absence of shame and why community matters.

For more info on the film and to WATCH it head here.

Synopsis:

The Panola Project highlights the heroic efforts of Dorothy Oliver to keep her small town of Panola, Alabama safe from COVID-19. Dorothy runs a makeshift vaccine coordination center from the convenience store she runs out of a mobile home. Today, nearly 99% of adults in her town have received the shot in a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. The Panola Project illuminates how an often-overlooked rural Black community comes together in creative ways to survive.

About Rachel and Jeremy:

Rachel DeCruz is a Black woman with a complex family history related to race, her work centers on how race impacts people’s ability to navigate systems. Nine, her feature debut, will examine the deep bond between two men who met in prison and how their love gives them the strength to fight for justice. The film was an official selection of the 2021 Big Sky Pitch and received a development grant from the Ford Foundation.

DeCruz is the director of The Panola Project, a short film highlighting the heroic efforts of Dorothy Oliver to keep her small town of Panola, Alabama safe from COVID-19. The film was released with The New Yorker, featured on MSNBC's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and Morning Joe and written about in numerous publications including USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, and Business Insider. The film received hundreds of thousands of social interactions, with posts from figures like Margaret Atwood, Ibram X. Kendi, and Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of the CDC during the Obama Administration. The Panola Project received Audience Awards at GlobeDocs and the Sidewalk Film Festival, where Dorothy was honored with the Spirit of Sidewalk award.

Jeremy S. Levine’s films explore race, class, and trauma, and seek to unearth buried tragedies in a society in active denial of its own past. An Emmy award-winning filmmaker and two-time Sundance Institute fellow, his work has screened at over one hundred film festivals around the world including the Berlinale, Tribeca, and Sundance, streamed on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sundance Now, and Hulu, broadcast nationally in nine countries, and received over a dozen festival awards.

In 2008, Levine co-founded the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective (BFC), a community of professional filmmakers dedicated to collaboration and mutual support. He is currently developing projects exploring issues including the criminal justice system, the unresolved legacy of white supremacy, forced separation, and the representation of mental health in horror films.

Image Copyright and Credit: Rachel DeCruz and Jeremy Levine

F2F Music and Image Copyright: David Peck and Face2Face. Used with permission.

For more information about David Peck’s podcasting, writing and public speaking please visit his site here.

With thanks to Josh Snethlage and Mixed Media Sound.

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