About The Voiceless Roar

Elaine Zicree is a filmmaker who started as a writer-director in New York theatre, then moved on to work with her husband as a writer in series television, including developing a pilot for Showtime and a second in association with Tom Fontana (HOMICIDE, OZ).  She was also nominated for the prestigious Humanitas Prize for her work for PBS and, transitioning into independent film, produced a one-hour drama on the web which went on to be nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula, and won the TV Guide Award (against studio product).  This lead to her work as a co-writer/producer/director on an ambitious independent science fiction film series SPACE COMMAND. She is currently developing character-driven dramas which celebrate the power of the individual battling against all odds for the greater good.

The Spark

The seed for THE VOICELESS ROAR was first planted when Ms. Zicree drove the back roads of this country, gathering stories.  What is now a raging flood was then a trickle:  the withering of small towns in the blast furnace of corporate greed.  Wall Street’s vision of America had not yet come into full strength, but union busting and outsourcing were going strong, and she was guided past many abandoned homes, “walkaways”, where a lifetime of work and hope were left to the blowing dust.  Thus evolved…

The Story

Lockston.  Once the home of band concerts and front porch swings and independent thinkers, the town is slowly shriveling in the new economy – and with it, the spirits of its citizens, seeming to shrivel them into a lesser and more timid breed.

At open, the lines are drawn in the sand.  The town’s mayor is determined to save the day with UltraMart and strip malls, others see this as only a different kind of death – they want to revitalize rather than corporatize.  But the dissenters have been marginalized as cranks, and the mayor is playing fear like a finely tuned instrument.

Only a rock-solid citizen like MIKE CAITES has the potential weight to turn things around, override their mayor’s new “approved questions only” rule at the upcoming, pre-election town meeting.  But Mike, so often a safe harbor for troubled friends and neighbors, hardly sees himself as a warrior.  A man with a hard past and a crippling fear of his own anger, direct confrontation feels dangerous.  Still, as friends’ farms and businesses fail and poverty-wage jobs take their place, Mike is growingly confronted with the terrible cost if he fails to try.    

Especially since, with tensions rising over the approaching meeting – and the mayor  stacking the deck ever higher in his own “one-percenters take all” favor – the voice of a warrior seems the only voice that might be heard.