ROLL RED ROLL

A thoughtfully reported narrative about a rape case at the center of a deeply polarized town, exploring what creates a culture where sexual violence is tacitly understood and condoned, and how to make a difference.

Documentary film director and producer, Nancy Schwartzman with novelist Nora Zelevansky will explain the entire case surrounding a beloved football player and a teen girl and the complexities that come along with it. While protecting the girl's identity, the author manages to focus on the rapists and their choice to commit the crime of discussion. In addition, Schwartzman relinquishes details on the assailants past crimes. The book is based on Schwartzman's award-winning documentary that received a 100% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and was chosen as a Critic's Pick in The New York Times.

On a summer night in 2012, a sixteen year-old girl incapacitated by alcohol was repeatedly assaulted by Steubenville, Ohio high school football stars, all of it documented on Twitter, YouTube, and through text and voice messages. Like everyone else in Steubenville, Jane Doe learned of the crimes committed on her body via social media. Many of the photos and videos from that night were deleted, but not before being captured and shared by a crime blogger, after which they went viralputting Steubenville on the national stage.

In Roll Red Roll, Nancy Schwartzman offers a broader understanding of rape culture, weaving memory and new testimony from a decade's research into the event and town, taking readers beyond Steubenville to look at America as a whole. For readers of Jon Krakauer's Missoula and Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's She Said, Roll Red Roll unpacks the factors that create communities which engender systemic disdain for women and normalize sexual assault. Schwartzman proposes ways to unlearn the norms of a society that too often sacrifices its daughters for the sake of protecting its sons.

Nancy Schwartzman is a Peabody Award-nominated documentary film director and producer who uses storytelling and technology to create safer communities for women and girls. Her documentary feature debut, Roll Red Roll, was nominated for a Peabody award, premiered in 2018 at the Tribeca Film Festival, and has screened at over 40 film festivals worldwide and garnered 7 best documentary awards. It streamed in 190 countries on Netflix, PBS, and BBC. She is currently directing a Netflix original documentary feature with Reveal: Center for Investigative Reporting and Motto Pictures that will premiere in 2022. Her recent short film One Shot One Kill (2020), explored gun culture for Mother Jones, and her short film Anonymous Comes To Town (2019), co-produced with the Tribeca Film Institute and Gucci's Chime for Change, garnered over a 4.5 million views on the Guardian. Her first film, The Line (2010), a short documentary examining consent, was used by the White House for a campaign around sexuality, and her follow-up film xoxosms (2013), was on PBS/POV and BBC, exploring love between two teenagers, bridged by technology. A globally recognized human rights activist, Nancy is a tech founder and created the Obama/Biden White House's award-winning mobile app Circle of 6, designed to reduce sexual violence among America's youth and college students. She has presented her work at the White House, the United Nations, TEDxSheffield, CNN, Forbes, Good Pitch, DOCNYC and at over 60 colleges and universities. She is a graduate of Columbia University and a recent transplant to Los Angeles.

Nora Zelevansky is the author of novels Competitive Grieving, Will You Won't You Want Me?, and Semi-Charmed Life. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, ELLE, Town & Country, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair among others. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two kids, and enormous cat, Waldo.