Film Screening & Panel Discussion: SEIZED, directed by UAlbany alum Sharon Liese

About

Screening and panel discussion with UAlbany alum and filmmaker Sharon Liese, Marion County Record editor/publisher Eric Meyer, and additional panelist TBA.

The Palace Theatre, 19 Clinton Avenue, Albany

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(2026, 94 min., U.S., color). Directed by Sharon Liese.

A 2023 police raid on the Marion County Record, a small-town weekly newspaper, ignites a fierce debate about freedom of the press, bringing national and international attention to the tiny rural community of Marion, Kansas. Joan Meyer, the 98-year-old co-owner of the paper with her son, Eric Meyer, died one day after experiencing the emotional trauma of the raid. The Sundance Institute called it, “a must-see documentary about a small-town crisis.”

Sharon Liese, filmmaker and UAlbany alum (Class of 1981), is the director of SEIZED. Her previous film as co-director was the Emmy Award-winning short documentary, THE FLAGMAKERS (2022), featuring the stories of immigrant and refugee employees at the largest American flag factory in the nation.

Eric Meyer, publisher of the Marion County Record, began working at the paper in the fifth grade, and purchased it together with his parents in 1998. A retired professor of Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he served formerly as associate dean of the university's College of Media.

Cosponsored by the Times Union, University at Albany Alumni Association, and the UAlbany Journalism Program.

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