‘Storm Lake’ Film is a Labor of Love about Iowa

By ART CULLEN

We’re excited for the world premiere of the feature-length documentary “Storm Lake” at the Full Frame Film Festival hosted by Duke University in Durham, NC.

The 85-minute film by Jerry Risius and Beth Levison is beautiful — a bit overwhelming for this old editor, and I’m sure, for our loyal staff. It tells the story of The Storm Lake Times from the time we won the Pulitzer Prize in 2017 through the pandemic of 2021. In the process, it paints a colorful and intimate portrait of the The City Beautiful through the lens of the newspaper.

“I felt like I was living in Storm Lake,” said Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan.

That’s pretty much all you need for a review.

The film ran June 2-6 at Full Frame, and then was scheduled at the American Film Institute’s documentary festival in Washington, D.C., June 22-27. Tickets for Full Frame have sold out. Tickets remain available at afi.com for the AFI DOCS festival. It will show at several other film festivals (including in New Zealand) through the summer and fall. Also, “Storm Lake” will be broadcast on PBS’s “Independent Lens” series later this fall.

It explores the highs and lows of the extended Cullen family, the newspaper and the community. The documentary really digs in to the idea of civic engagement, with the best portrayal I’ve ever seen of the Iowa Caucus process and how it serves democracy. It is timely, indeed urgent, in an era when local news is under assault, democracy is in doubt and the truth is in retreat (witness the vote in the Senate not to investigate how the Jan. 6 insurrection happened).

Risius called me shortly after we won the Pulitzer to ask if he could spend some time shooting us in Storm Lake. He said he picked up the New York Times one morning and saw that some little paper in Northwest Iowa had won journalism’s highest honor. Reared on a family hog farm at Buffalo Center, Iowa, Risius said always wanted to do a labor of love documentary about Iowa. The University of Iowa grad (former bartender at The Mill) had spent the last 15 years as director of photography with CNN’s Anthony Bourdain shooting around the world while dropping his bags in New York City. He wanted to capture home.

We could hardly say no since we make our living telling other people’s stories. It required us to talk about things we would prefer not to, such as our ragged bottom line.

Jerry spent a week or so shooting by himself and produced a teaser that attracted the attention of Levison, an acclaimed documentary producer.

They returned to Storm Lake periodically with a crew, including an audio specialist and a second cameraman behind Risius. They came in the spring of 2019 for the Heartland Presidential Forum at Buena Vista University, returned through the summer (perfectly capturing the Fourth of July) and fall, and made their last journey for the caucuses.

It’s a sign of their professionalism that they grew into the woodwork. I barely noticed they were there — but sometimes regretting a vulgar remark after realizing a hot mic was running up under my shirt. Plus, having a photographer next to me is second nature — brother John and I worked a lot of stories together with him behind the lens. There was no learning curve with Jerry. He knows how Iowa rolls.

They followed me on a pre-Fourth of July interview with John Snyder at his Sulphur Springs estate to see how high the corn was after a wet spring. They tagged with son Tom Cullen as he tagged with Tom Lane planting city council campaign signs around Alta. They shot wife Dolores shooting Emmanuel Trujillo as he competed in a TV singing show. The stuff of a hometown newspaper. It’s remarkably compelling, and weird, for us to watch. It was especially eery as our story through the pandemic year is portrayed in grainy Zoom images on lockdown while our Republic teetered. It reminds me of a time I never want to go through again.

We developed fond friendships with the crew. We trusted them to produce an honest account without making us look like complete hicks or braggards. They did, in my view at least. Jerry and I became close as he is a little younger than me, but likes all the same hippie music. His stories of a stint in the Peace Corps in Ecuador, or just trying to stay up with Bourdain in some distant jungle, are captivating. We are eager to catch up when he visits family in Iowa this summer — last week he was chasing tornados with the National Weather Service in Oklahoma.

We hear they are sniffing out a Storm Lake showing. We couldn’t be prouder than to watch alongside them and the community it lovingly profiles. We will keep you posted, of course.

Art Cullen is the publisher and editor of The Storm Lake Times. He won the the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 2017 and is the author of the book “Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper.” Cullen can be reached at times@stormlake.com.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2021

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