Beverly Seckinger

Beverly Seckinger is Distinguished Outreach Professor in the School of Theatre, Film & Television and former Interim Director (2008-2010) and Associate Director (2004-2008) of the School of Media Arts.  She serves on the Executive Committee of the Human Rights Practice graduate program, is a founding member of the UA Institute for LGBT Studies, and since 1993 has directed the annual Lesbian Looks Film Series.

Her film Hippie Family Values, a feature-length documentary about three generations at a back-to-the-land community in rural New Mexico, won the Grand Festival Award for Documentary at the Berkeley Film Festival, the Outstanding Project Award for 2019 from the Communal Studies Association, and the Outstanding Documentary Award from the University Film & Video Association. The film continues to screen in community and campus venues across the country, and is distributed to educational institutions by New Day Films.

Seckinger’s previous films have been screened on PBS, at international festivals in the US, Europe, Canada, Australia and Latin America, and non-theatrically throughout the U.S.  Her 2004 diary/documentary Laramie Inside Out, about the aftermath of Matthew Shepard's 1998 murder in her hometown community, had its U.S. broadcast premiere on PBS in June 2007, and is distributed by New Day Films, Filmoption/Canada, and American Public Television. It has been screened at dozens of universities, conferences and community events across the country, and purchased for the permanent collections of over 400 colleges and universities.

In 2014, Seckinger launched an interdisciplinary initiative to establish a Center for Documentary at the University of Arizona, and directs the DocScapes screening and workshop series.  In 2017 she created DocVisions, a community outreach program that teaches basic documentary skills to UA students from diverse majors, who in turn mentor refugee and immigrant teens in media production.  She teaches the course Advancing Human Rights through Documentary Media for the UA's online graduate program in Human Rights Practice, which recently launched a new Graduate Certificate in Human Rights and Documentary Media.  (See Feb 2021 profile in Filmmaker Magazine.)  

Since 2004 Seckinger has been a member-owner of New Day Films, the leading filmmaker-owned distribution company for social issue documentaries, and has served on the Steering Committee as head of the Web Operations team (2014-16) and Head of Promotions (2010-12). She is a longtime member and former officer and board member of the University Film & Video Association. She spent four years in Morocco, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer English teacher (1981-83), and then as a literacy researcher (1985-86), and served as a USAID-Women in Development consultant in Tunisia (1993, 1994).