Genre
Synopsis
FORTRESS follows Audie Partem, a Black civil rights professor renowned for her faith in due process and the criminal justice system, whose name even means “let the other side be heard” in Latin. Audie's faith is severely tested when she becomes the victim of a gang of traffickers and who hold her captive on a decommissioned military fort. Trapped beneath six feet of solid stone and surrounded by an eight-foot deep moat with no cell service and no one to hear her cries for help, Audie learns quickly that if she wants to survive the night, there’s only one way out - kill or be killed.
Bio
Elizabeth Gray Bayne is the founder of graybayne film/media, a health and social issue-based production company, where she produces films, PSAs and digital content for universities, nonprofits and government agencies, as well as teaches community-based storytelling and documentary filmmaking to high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is a recipient of generous grants from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Glassbreaker Films, and the Center for Cultural Innovation.
An award-winning filmmaker, her work centers on the use of storytelling and behavioral psychology to motivate audiences to change behavior and adapt new habits for improved health outcomes. Elizabeth has a Masters in Public Health from Yale University and a Masters of Fine Art from the ArtCenter College of Design. She has produced documentary and PSA content for MIT, USC, the LA County Department of Public Health, and her work has appeared on ABC, the Smithsonian Channel and Magic Johnson's Aspire TV Network.
Elizabeth's short documentary "Continuing A Legacy" about black cowgirl and junior rodeo competitor London Gladney earned Best Documentary Short at the BronzeLens and Reel Sisters of the Diaspora Film Festivals in 2021. She recently completed her first feature documentary "Chocolate Milk" about birth and breastfeeding gaps for Black mothers in the U.S. which will have its West Coast premiere in 2024 at the Pan African Film Festival.
Awards History
Project Greenlight Clive Barker's Reel Fear Horror Pitch Contest 2017 - Semifinalist
Women in Film/Black List Feature Writing Lab 2017 - Semifinalist