the BEAR and the PEOPLE– one hour documentary feature, in development
Producer/Director: LeAnn Erickson
Tagline- She offered healing. They took up the mantle.
Logline- When Hurricane Helene hit Asheville NC on September 27, 2024, this little mountain town was, essentially, destroyed. One woman is using the healing force of art to help rebuild her community, and her world, one bicycle tire at a time.
Description- In 2023 Marcia K Moore left behind a successful career as a forensic research artist to move to a forest in North Carolina in hopes of creating a stronger connection between her art, the environment, and her community. Using recycled bicycle tires as her medium, Moore began creating life size sculptures of animals, and mythical forest creatures.
Less than a year after her move, Hurricane Helene hit the Asheville NC area, damaging Moore’s studio while devastating the surrounding communities. With Sharpie in hand, Moore began a spontaneous wall drawing. As a protector bear emerged, she found that the process brought her comfort. Seeking solace, townspeople began flocking to her studio to share their flood stories. In sharing their experiences, they confronted their fears, and art soon became part of their healing process.
As Asheville began its cleanup, 2000 miles northwest another mountain community was struggling with loss. On October 22, less than a month after Helene, Yellowstone National Park lost iconic mother bear Grizzly 399. Killed in a vehicle accident, Grizzly 399 was 28 years old, having mothered 18 cubs during her lifetime. Acknowledging a link between her bear drawing and the Yellowstone bear, Moore is rallying her community to create a life size sculpture of Grizzly 399. Moore has arranged to donate the completed statue to the Shoshone and Arapaho people of Wyoming – a restorative gift of ART from one devastated community to another.
The BEAR and the PEOPLE will follow Moore and her collective through the building of the Bear, the road trip from NC to WY, and the final dedication of her gift statue. This endeavor is both a physical task and an emotional journey, as Moore and the people who have rallied around her, turn to art as their healing process.
Top Secret Rosies – one hour dramatic Television Series pitch
It’s the spring of 1944 and Jewish sisters Dee and Addie Kohl are deeply involved in the war effort. Grace Newsom, an African-American math teacher from Harlem has just arrived at the Kohl’s Philadelphia boarding house with her five year old son Zeke in tow, followed shortly by Iowa farm girl Brita Yager. This unlikely foursome has only one thing in common- their mathematical ability. While Rosie the Riveter uses her brawn to build bombs, the US Army is using the brainpower of these Top Secret Rosies to make them deadly accurate. Together these women will discover opportunity, unity- and even love- amid the chaos of a world at war.
Top Secret Rosies, a one hour dramatic television series, is a fictionalized retelling for the little known, true story of the women and technology that helped win WWII and usher in the modern computer age.
Available materials include: Pilot script, Pitch Deck, Series Bible