jturner-16015

Jean Seberg was a stunningly beautiful movie star -- and small-town Iowa native -- whose inner beauty proved some of her most important work never appeared on screen.

These lasting legacies of film magic and selfless social activism are sensitively captured in the new documentary, "Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg."

More than 20 years in the making (since conceived by Seberg author Garry McGee of Elma, Iowa), the intensely personal, illuminating and sympathetic 93-minute portrait was produced by Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Moline-based Fourth Wall Films with Mr. McGee, who filmed key interviews with Seberg family and friends in the 1990s.

Some of the most moving footage comes from a 1991 interview with Seberg's sister, Mary Ann, who appears in her first on-camera interview and recalls that Jean declared she wanted to be a movie star at age 5. She was dead by 40, of an apparent suicide, which remains mysteriously questioned in the documentary.

Born in 1938 in Marshalltown, Iowa, Seberg shot to international stardom short of her 18th birthday when she was picked from among 18,000 applicants to play Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger's "Saint Joan" (1957). She went on to star in 37 films (over 22 years) in America and abroad, including the landmark French New Wave film "Breathless" (1960), by director Jean-Luc Godard.

From her high school drama teacher to others who knew her best, we learn what made Seberg special -- from her large, hypnotic eyes to a trend-setting fashion sense, to a thoughtfulness and intelligence that radiated from everything she did.

Mary Ann relates how Jean was ahead of her time in many ways, including her interest in politics, medicine, social justice and philanthropy. We see how she worked for the underdog, the underprivileged, and just wanted to make the world a better place. An interview with a 1950s-era Iowa governor shows Seberg as chair of a "Teenagers Against Polio" group, supporting the March of Dimes.

Seberg joined the NAACP at age 14, was an advocate for the Meskawki Tribe in Tama, Iowa (near Marshalltown), was active in the civil rights movement, and was targeted by J. Edgar Hoover with a successful F.B. I. smear campaign. That, according to the filmmakers, is the reason she has been largely forgotten by Iowa and America.

"She was a person, like all of us, who made good choices and bad choices," Mr. McGee said in a release on the film. "There were things that happened to her that she didn't deserve. Jean was just trying to do what was right. You see a consistent thread throughout her life of reaching out to people who had fewer opportunities than she had."

One of the highlights of the biographical film -- filled with private family photos and video -- is an interview with former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown, who was Seberg's friend at the time the F.B.I. targeted the Panthers (Seberg supported the civil-rights group's free breakfast program for children). Hoover personally issued a memorandum saying that Seberg should be "neutralized," and the actress' phones were tapped and agents were assigned to follow her.

"Her career was destroyed. Her marriage was destroyed. Her life was destroyed by what they did," Ms. Brown said.

"The documentary strips away the Hollywood gossip, the national media hype, and the F.B.I. propaganda to find a young woman of conscience embroiled in the important issues of her day," producer Kelly Rundle said in the release. "She also carved out a unique and important international film career."

An F.B.I.-instigated rumor while Seberg was pregnant with her second child said the father was a "black militant." At the time, she was married to French novelist/diplomat Romain Gary, with whom she had a son in 1962.

The story was printed as fact in Newsweek and 100 newspapers in August 1970. A shocked Seberg went into labor three months early. The child, Nina (conceived from an affair), lived for just two days. Seberg took her dead daughter to Marshalltown for burial to show the public the rumor was a lie, and her friend and musician Mark Adams-Westin (who played at the funeral) is interviewed in the film.

He wistfully recalls in that era, artists weren't about making money but "about being human and humane," Mr. Adams-Westin said. "That was something Jean had and Jean shared." He and his wife Amy (from St. Paul, Minn.) will provide music at a reception before Saturday's Figge screening.

After being reported missing Aug. 30, 1979, Jean Seberg's dead body was found Sept. 8, nude, wrapped in a blanket in the back seat of her parked car, just blocks from her Paris apartment. The official report showed she overdosed on prescription drugs and had a high blood-alcohol level. In the documentary, doubts are raised that she killed herself.

Seberg's heart and tenderness also "lit up the screen," Mr. Adams- Westin says in this beautiful, bittersweet film. "Her beauty was from the inside out and that made her a movie star, the genuine love that she had, that she shared on screen."

He will be among a post-screening panel that will answer audience questions Saturday. In addition to the Rundles and Mr. McGee, the Q&A will also include Richard Ness, associate professor of film and media studies at Western Illinois University, who's also in "Movie Star."

The Rundles received a Midwest Regional Emmy nomination for their documentary "Country School: One Room – One Nation," and multiple awards for their documentaries "Lost Nation: The Ioway" (1, 2 & 3) and "Villisca: Living with a Mystery."

Mr. McGee is the author of "Jean Seberg: Breathless" and co-author of "Neutralized: The FBI vs Jean Seberg" and "The Films of Jean Seberg." He received a Midwest Regional Emmy nomination for writing on "The Last Wright," a documentary he co-produced with Lucille Carra.

*** Originally published on QCOnline.com.

Kelly and Tammy Rundle of Moline, Ill.-based Fourth Wall Films certainly know how to make history.

The prolific, award-winning husband-and-wife team make history come alive — and make the inarguable case for historic preservation — through intelligent, insightful, expertly crafted documentaries on important subjects that have Midwest connections.

They reveal the height of their expressive, compassionate cinematic powers with their latest, "The Barn Raisers," which tells the story of barns in the Upper Midwest through the loving lens of architecture.

Filmed in Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Kansas, the ambitious and observant canvas (stretching a bit under an hour) paints a mesmerizing picture of how barn styles, building methods and materials reflect the people who built them, the life they lived, and the role these "country cathedrals" played in settling and building the nation, according to a Fourth Wall summary.

That religious theme is explored occasionally in this meaningful, affecting portrait. It serenely starts with sounds of birds, then majestic organ music, accompanying the painterly images. That's fitting as "Barn Raisers" feels like a hymn to the solemn beauty and importance of these buildings, and the Rundles treat them with the reverence they deserve.

One of many of the film's interviewees — including barn preservationists, historians, farmers and architects — likens barns to being in a cathedral. Many early barn builders also built churches, and used similar types of construction. One interior shows a magnificent arched roof, like a church, and the film says it can be a spiritual experience to simply stand in a barn.

Jeremy Marlow, artist and barn owner in Waukon, Iowa, recalls that as churches are landmarks on the European landscape, barns are landmarks here.

"These barns are part of the history of American immigration, and it's really sad to see these things fall down at an alarming rate," he says. It's estimated that Iowa loses more than 1,000 barns each year.

"The Barn Raisers" revels in a vital way of life that it says has been largely forgotten, and the film reminds us that these examples of America's rural past still are here to be appreciated.

"I see old barns as documents," says architectural historian Marlin Ingalls of the Office of the State Archaeologist in Iowa City. "There's no other thing on the landscape that gives that sense of connection to the history and agricultural activities of a bygone era."

Tim Anderson, historical geographer in Athens, Ohio, says barns loom large in the American mind, even though less than 2 percent of the labor force currently farms.

These buildings — traditionally erected with no plans, with the cooperation of untrained neighbors and entire communities — contain stories of our past, Mr. Anderson says. "When you lose that building, you also lose all the stories associated with it; they vanish from our collective consciousness."

"The Barn Raisers" compellingly and emotionally makes the case for another skill in need of rebuilding — stewardship.

"I think a barn evokes a sense of respect for the hard-working, rugged individualist of a farmer, out there on his own, making his way through life, being successful, building a country as he is building his own life," Jeffrey Marshall of the National Barn Alliance says.

Many Iowa barns appear in the film, including the Nebergall "Knoll Crest" Round Barn in Scott County, designed and built in 1914 by architect Benton Steele.

Steele believed the round barn was the strongest form of building, creating the most efficient use of space, the film says. He was hired by Charles W. Nebergall, of Davenport, and this is the only known example of a round barn from his work left in Iowa.

We also see a 1839 barn in the village of St. Donatus in Jackson County, Iowa, arguably the oldest barn in the state, built with stones from local quarries.

Barns were traditionally painted red in the 19th century because that was the cheapest paint, the film says, noting other colors, like white, showed people farmers were doing better. Farmers also were competitive, wanting to ensure they made a good impression, from their wood piles to clotheslines, to paint.

John Poorman, a sixth-generation farmer in Somerset, Ohio, shows a barn from 1819 — requiring a massive amount of labor to construct, with stones weighing 900 pounds. "If we want to keep the history going, we have to keep these structures intact," he says.

"We have to have a pride in what we're doing, not only raising crops and cattle, but in the buildings that have been here a long time, and stand for what our ancestors have done."

"The Barn Raisers" includes a visit to nearby southwest Wisconsin, and a beautiful barn designed by Frank Lloyd Wright — just south of Spring Green and the Wisconsin River, on the architect's Taliesin estate.

Jim Erickson, director of preservation at Taliesin, notes it's markedly different than your standard barn in Wisconsin, very "horizontal, hugging the land line."

Kelly Rundle said by email that the film "is not designed for barn experts. It's designed for someone who has never thought about a vintage barn as a valuable resource. As one of our interviewees says in the film, barns are the story of America, and preserving barns is preserving that story."

Fourth Wall has produced the regional Emmy-nominated documentaries "River to River: Iowa's Forgotten Highway 6," "Letters Home to Hero Street" (co-produced with PBS station WQPT), and "Country School: One Room – One Nation," and the award-winning films "Lost Nation: The Ioway" and "Villisca: Living with a Mystery," as well as the feature- length "Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg" (co-produced with Garry McGee).

*** Originally published on QCOnline.com.