Filmmaking team wins Tellys; next project already in motion

"Cultivating Kindness," an 18-minute documentary about Mound City's efforts to promote respect and kindness was awarded a bronze Telly Award and three Mound City-area women earned personal recognition for their efforts. The next stop for the film is the regional Emmy Awards. (Roger Sims / Linn County Journal)

By Roger Sims, rsims@linncountyjournal.com

Sue Vicory came through the door of Stonetree Coffee carrying three identical boxes. It was obvious from the care she took in setting them down on one of the tables that their contents contained considerable weight.

She opened the top box and carefully removed the layer of bubble wrap surrounding the metallic statue, a stylized human form in shiny bronze with appendages more like wings than arms. The engraved bronze plate attached to the base read: “The Telly Awards, 2025, Taylor Snyder, Cultivating Kindness, Director of Photography, Editor”

Vicory set that statue on the table, opening the next box to find a similar award but this time the inscription included, “Angela Holt, Screenwriter.”

The next box held an identical statue, this time with the engraving, “Sue Vicory, Director, Executive Producer.

Taylor Snyder, from left, Sue Vicory and Angela Holt hold the Telly Awards they won. (Roger Sims / Linn County Journal)

Vicory had invited Snyder and Holt to the coffee shop that Friday morning, June 13, without telling them what she had in mind. When they arrived there was a sort of low-key Telly Awards ceremony, complete with espresso machine noise, for the documentary “Cultivating Kindness” that premiered in May. 

The documentary features several Mound City residents, including students, who talk about what kindness means to them. It won a bronze in the general-documentary division, which honors “impactful documentary storytelling.” Here is a link to the 18-minute movie: https://www.moundcity.org/cultivating-kindness

The Telly Awards are awarded based on judging by more than 200 members of the film and media industry, who receive some 13,000 entries from across the globe annually.

But for Vicory, whose non-profit filmmaking company Heartland Films Inc. has been making documentaries for more than two decades, the next step is entering the documentary for an Emmy Award. The regional Emmy Awards ceremony will be held in Kansas City later this year, and Vicory said she expects “Cultivating Kindness” to do well.

The kindness project is the fifth project that Snyder and Vicory have collaborated on. It is the second project that has involved Holt as well.

All three women, along with several other Mound City residents, were involved in the projection of “Original Jayhawker,” a film about the history of Mound City. You can follow this link to see that hourlong documentary: https://www.moundcity.org/original-jayhawker-film

Vicory and Snyder worked on “The Last Butterflies,” a fictional account of a Midwestern family seeking to survive after a series of ecological disasters, with Vicory producing and directing and Snyder filming. They were joined by Vicki Lovett of Mound City who did set design for the production.

Although the film premiered in 2024, it is not available for wide distribution.

For Vicory, the Tellys and the Emmys are not new. Her productions have received seven Tellys and have been nominated for six Emmys. She also received a lifetime achievement award from Washburn University, her alma mater, and has served as moderator and panelist at the Cannes Film Festival in France.

Taylor Snyder, in the red cap at left, records a scene from "The Last Butterflies." (Tara St. Charles / Special to the Journal)

Snyder, whose Taylor’d Film Co. once just specialized in wedding videos, has worked with Vicory on music videos of Nashville-based country music artist Blane Howard and for Kansas City-based blues-rocker Nicki White.

“I feel like every project I’ve worked on with Sue has been a blessing and allowed me to grow,” said Snyder.

She endured brutally cold conditions while filming local scenes for “The Last Butterflies” around Milford, Kan., during the winter of 2023-2024. Despite those conditions, the filming added to the impact of the movie, however, she related that the tragic ending of the movie bothered her. 

For Holt, writing is more of an avocation rather than an occupation.

“It’s always been kind of a hobby,” she said. “I’m always writing.”

On receiving the news that she had won a Telly, Holt said she had never won anything. Then she had to backtrack: She has won Kansas Press Association awards for her advertising work for the Linn County News.

But nothing for writing. Until now. She has unpublished works of prose and poetry stashed away at home.

Earlier this year Vicory said she planned to slow down after selling a family business – a business that manufactures tin ceiling panels, the kind that used to adorn ceilings of Main Street businesses across the nation.

But even semi-retirement doesn’t seem to be in the cards for her now.

Taylor and Holt will join Vicory later this summer to work on another project, a documentary about the February 1955 Trans World Airlines Flight 260 from Albuquerque to Santa Fe that crashed in the Sandia Mountains. That crash killed 13 passengers and three crew members. Here is a link to background on that crash: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_260

Although initially the cause of the crash was deemed pilot error, that determination was changed to unknown because so many other factors was involved. There is an indication that the flight crew received erroneous information about the plane’s location from a malfunctioning instrument, and that led to the crash.