"Bully" Director and Writer Will Speak in Cedar Falls Tuesday

The will host Bully film director Lee Hirsch and producer and writer Cynthia Lowen for a panel discussion at 4 p.m. May 1 in Sabin Auditorium.

UNI faculty who research and educate about bullying will join Hirsch and Lowen. The panel will discuss bullying and strategies for prevention as well as work on the film.

Bully, a documentary about the growing problem of bullying in schools, has garnered critical acclaim and national attention. The film features an Iowa boy, and bullying has been in Iowa's news recently with the recent suicide of an Iowa teen who classmates taunted by classmates for being gay.

Students and educators in Cedar Falls and Waterloo schools and UNI will receive 1,000 tickets for the film, which is airing through May 1 at Marcus College Square Theatres in Cedar Falls. The public can purchase tickets through Marcus College Square Theatres.

The effort, part of an initiative called "The Bully Project" is being supported by UNI's Center for Violence Prevention.

"It was important for UNI's Center for Violence Prevention and for our education and counseling programs to have the opportunity to bring this powerful documentary to Cedar Falls," Alan Heisterkamp, director of mentors in violence prevention at the center, said in a press release. "It's a phenomenal opportunity for our university students who will be working with children and for students in the Cedar Falls and Waterloo schools to have an opportunity to learn from this film."

According to the Bully Project, 13 million kids will be bullied in the U.S. this year.

The film follows the lives of five students who face bullying on a daily basis. The goal of the film is to highlight solutions and systemic change that will bring together organizations and individuals to end bullying.

Hirsch's debut film "Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony" won a Sundance Film Festival award, and also one of the five Emmy awards it was nominated for. He has also directed and produced a series on the Discovery and History channels. "Bully" has already been nominated and won 10 awards at festivals including the 2011 Los Angeles Film festival, 2012 True/False Film Festival and many others.

Lowen is an award-winning writer and recipient of the Discovery Prize. She is the co-author of "The Essential Guide to Bullying: Prevention and Intervention," forthcoming from Alpha Books, and her work has been published widely.

For more information about the film, visit thebullyproject.com. For more information about the May 1 panel, contact Heisterkamp at alan.heisterkamp@uni.edu.

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