Professor
Interim Director, School of Media Arts

School of Media Arts Administration
Film & Video Production
Graduate Studies in Media Arts

Professor Beverly Seckinger received an M.F.A. in Radio-Television-Film from Temple University (1991), an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona (1987), and a B.A. in English and French from the University of Wyoming (1981). Before joining the Media Arts faculty in 1991, she worked as a freelance media producer, and spent four years in Morocco as a Peace Corps Volunteer and then as a literacy researcher.

Seckinger's 2004 diary/documentary Laramie Inside Out explores the ongoing reverberations in her hometown community of Matthew Shepard's 1998 murder. Laramie Inside Out won the Best of Arizona award at the 2004 Arizona International Film Festival, and is distributed by New Day Films, Filmoption/Canada, and American Public Television. To date, Laramie Inside Out has been purchased for the permanent collections of over 200 colleges and universities across the U.S., as well as public libraries, high schools, church resource centers and community education programs. The film had its U.S. broadcast premiere on PBS in June 2007.

She is currently in production on Hippie Family Values, a feature-length documentary that explores the historical and contemporary hippie counterculture of the southwest. The project is supported by an Artist Project Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and a Research Fellowship from the Hanson Film Institute.

Seckinger's previous videotapes include Mommie Queerest (1997), a comic short about mother/daughter conflicts over gender socialization; Bottoms Up (1996) and Alice Unplugged (1996), experimental satires on lesbian life in the 90's, both co-directed with Joyan Saunders; Planet in My Pocket (1995), a mixed-genre critique of consumer multiculturalism; and Letter From Morocco (1991), a personal documentary about neo-colonial relations. Her work has been screened at international festivals in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia and Latin America. In 2002 Seckinger was the recipient of a Media Arts Fellowship from the Arizona Commission on the Arts.

Seckinger teaches courses in documentary production and documentary studies. She is a founding member of the UA Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies, and since 1993 has directed the annual Lesbian Looks Film and Video Series. She was the founding coordinator of the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers (AIVF) Tucson salon, and a founding board member of local video collective Pan Left Productions. Seckinger is a longtime member of the University Film and Video Association and since 2004 has been a member/owner of New Day Films, the leading filmmaker-owned distribution company for social issue documentary films.

e-mail: bsecking@email.arizona.edu
office: 520.621.1239

Marshall Bldg, Room 229

Article in Fall 2009 Arizona Alumnus magazine
Laramie Inside Out film info
Lesbian Looks Film Series
University Film & Video Association