Fourth Wall Films
After realizing they wanted to keep making movies about Midwest stories, Tammy and Kelly Rundle made the long trek back from L.A. to set up a home base in the Quad Cities in 2007 for their film company, Fourth Wall Films. Both grew up in the Midwest making movies on their parents’ home movie equipment before moving to the ‘movie capital’ where Kelly worked for Columbia Pictures.
After making documentaries about the Villisca, Iowa, murders (released in 2004) and The Ioway (released in 2007) and logging thousands of miles going back and forth, they realized it would make more sense to be based where they were going to be filming.
“We’ve had access to some really unusual places and beautiful places,” said Kelly Rundle, “because of the stories we were telling. I love the landscape, the differences in how a place looks, the river, etc. People are still surprised we’re filmmakers living in the Midwest. And the cliché about the Midwest is true—people are just nice. They will go out of their way to be helpful and supportive of what you’re doing. For example, I was working on ‘Over & Under: Wildlife Crossings’ and I was getting footage of the turtles. A guy living nearby came to see what I was doing and offered to call me when he saw activity.”
“Over & Under: Wildlife Crossings” (released in 2020) is their first Emmy win after nine previous nominations. This Emmy win is still pretty rare for independent filmmakers. It won in the Environment/Science Short Form Content category. Kelly used to joke they were like the Susan Lucci of companies since they were a definite underdog competing against the commercial studios.
As independent filmmakers sometimes they choose the projects and sometimes projects come to them. WQPT-PBS had an opportunity to fund a film project and they approached Fourth Wall Films about it. Thus began the Hero Street project. “Hero Street is such a huge story to tell. We had to break it up into a series. It is the stories of the service members, and also the story of immigration, family, history, and more. We are not done.” They have made three films about Hero Street and plan to do a total of seven.
The length of time working on a film can be up to two years depending on its length. Starting with their love of telling stories, these documentaries and docudramas from Fourth Wall Films are telling the story using a powerful way to package it. Many haven’t heard the stories of their topics and they are bringing them to people’s attention from The Ioway people to old schoolhouses to Barn Raisers. Kelly said when that film was released in 2017 they heard stories back of people deciding to preserve their barns rather than tear them down.
Along with a love of history, Kelly likes the opportunity to work on different topics. But he says they’re never really done with a film once it’s released. “I always say we’re married to our films because we still get calls about all of them and travel to film showings to talk about them. We will always live with these films.”
They also just started a new non-profit this year called the Truth First Film Alliance, Inc. (TFFA). It focuses on bringing documentary films, and narrative films based on true stories, to the QC and the filmmakers that make them. They had their first event at the Figge Art Museum in November.
You can follow where a Fourth Wall Films movie will be shown next on their website and Facebook page.