Mary Rosanne Katzke is an American filmmaker, writer, and photographer known for Alaska-based documentaries bringing attention to various social and healthcare issues, including sexual assault, domestic violence, mental illness, homelessness, Alzheimer's disease, traumatic brain injury and breast cancer. Since 1982, she has produced four dozen grant-funded documentaries through her nonprofit production company Affinityfilms.
Early life and education
Katzke was born in the mid-1950s and was raised in Southern Minnesota. In 1978, she graduated from the University of Texas, Austin, with a bachelor's degree in the department of Radio-Television-Film and then completed her master of fine arts degree in writing and directing in 1992 on scholarship at New York University Tisch School of the Arts.
Her interest in filmmaking began with her father, Gus, who taught her the skills needed to make her first home movies and 8mm films. Katzke has also been influenced by life events, including her mother's death of breast cancer in 1983 at age 52 and her diagnosis, less than a decade later, in 1992.
Career
In 1981, Katzke produced her first documentary film, No Word for Rape, a film about sexual assault in urban and rural Alaska. The 16mm film about sexual assault in urban and rural Alaska was used by the Alaska Network of Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault (ANDVSA) for the next 20 years. It received several recognitions and grants, and the Alaska State Arts Council allowed her to produce five more documentaries on the topic, including domestic violence, homeless people, and safe winter driving.
In 1982, Katzke formed the nonprofit production company Affinityfilms, Funders with the funders including the American Film Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Rasmuson Foundation, Vision Maker Media, Chicken & Egg Pictures, the Bristol Bay Native Corporation and the Alaska State Arts Council.
In addition to documentary work, Katzke has written short stories, essays, feature-film screenplays and has been a periodic contributor of opinion pieces to the Anchorage Daily News. She has written several screenplays that include I Will Fight Until I Melt, Linger Where You Land, and Birdman.
In 1988, Katzke wrote Dancing for the Hunter, a play based on the true-life stories of 17 women pursued and murdered by Alaskan baker and serial killer Robert Hansen. The project grew from interviews Katzke began while working on the documentary Fourth Avenue when some of her subjects told her about a string of exotic dancers who had recently disappeared and how no one seemed to care. Her script was drawn from audiotaped interviews she conducted with about 15 strippers during the year prior to Hansen's arrest. Dancing for the Hunter debuted at the 2005 Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez and was noted in Backstage magazine.
Influences
The work of American filmmaker and documentarian Frederick Wiseman has been an important influence in her filmmaking. Kelsea Habecker wrote in F Magazine that, like in Wiseman's films, "Katzke’s films do not utilize voiceover narrations to highlight the story. Instead, she allows the subjects to tell their own stories through their actions and discourse with the camera."
Others important to her development include Gary Holthaus, founding director of the Alaska Humanities Forum; John Sayles, independent film director, and Judith Helfand, documentary filmmaker and mentor.
Films by theme
Unless otherwise noted, Katzke produced and directed the following works:
Sexual assault and domestic violence
Justice for Harriet (2021), produced by Katzke, is part of a series called Silent No More on missing and murdered Indigenous people in Alaska, and was made with support from the Bristol Bay Native Corporation and Sealaska Corporation.
Crescendo (1987), a half-hour documentary that addresses domestic violence, was supported by a grant from the American Film Institute and a community matching grant from the Anchorage Rotary Club.
No Word for Rape (1981), is a half-hour documentary addressing sexual assault in urban and rural Alaska. The film was selected for screenings across the country, including in Seattle and Chicago, and won several awards.
Environmental issues
Sea of Oil (1990), a documentary about the social and emotional impact of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, was screened at the Museum of Modern Art and was a 1991 Sundance Film Festival selection. The film aired nationally on Season 4 of PBS' POV Showcase in July 1991 and received a Silver Apple Award from the National Educational Film and Video Festival.