Bea Travis
(WHBL) – Sheboygan County may not strike you as “red carpet” material, but one filmmaker is convinced that her hometown area might be just right for feature film production and the arts opportunities that it would bring for local students.
Bea Travis grew up in Plymouth, studied filmmaking at UW-Madison and Prague, Czechoslovakia, and became a successful New York-based TV producer on the Emmy-winning true crime series “A Crime to Remember”. But Travis never forgot about Sheboygan County, and returned here in 2017 to start making movies with her venture called “The Belladonna Film Project”.
Travis, along with collaborator and Plymouth native Hannah Kaiser, will kick that project into high gear with a free virtual event called “Rising Tides” on Thursday, May 20th with help from the Sheboygan County Economic Development Corporation, and the Small Business Development Center at UW-Green Bay. The focus will be short film segments on some 18 new women-owned businesses in the Sheboygan area that were hard-hit by the pandemic less than two years after they started. “Rising Tides” will also include a live Q&A session for viewers, and a live panel discussion about women leading social change movements in Sheboygan County.
Travis already shot one short film called “Dead of Winter” in Plymouth this past February, but the project’s main act is the feature film “Belladonna”, a coming-of-old-age drama set in Sheboygan about an 80-year-old woman reckoning with the meaning of life after the passing of her husband. Travis anticipates production in May of next year, with the premiere at the Stefanie Weill Center before showings at national and international film festivals, but all that depends on raising the needed funds.
You can register for a link to the “Rising Tides” event at www.belladonnathefilm.com/
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