Kevin Kelley, a filmmaker who worked as a video producer for 30 years, plans to continue making films through a new nonprofit.

By Paige Schlichte
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Ever since he talked his mother into buying him a movie camera when he was 12, Kevin Kelley has loved to make movies.

Now, after 30 years of working as a videographer for the University of Iowa, Kelley will retire on Dec. 1.

But his retirement won’t be the end of his filmmaking career; he will continue making documentaries through a new nonprofit organization called New Mile Media Arts that he helped to found.

Kelley, who has two Emmys and two CINE Golden Eagle Awards under his belt, never formally studied film. Kelley obtained an art degree from the University of Northern Iowa, where he studied painting, but filmmaking has always been where his passion lies.

“You learn by just doing it,” Kelley said. “I was lucky because in high school one of my teachers decided to start a film class, which was really unprecedented at the time.”

During his time as a video producer for the UI Office of Strategic Communication, Kelley mentored students interested in filmmaking, some of whom have gone on to work for Oprah, “Saturday Night Live,” Warner Brothers, and Lionsgate, not to mention two who wrote a screenplay for John Krasinski.

For these contributions and many others, Kelley was recently given the David J. Skorton Award for Staff Excellence in Service to the UI.

“I’ve decided I love making films, and I’m going to continue doing that through New Mile Media Arts,” Kelley said.

Kelley, who is the artistic director for New Mile, said the organization is not just a film company or a nonprofit that makes documentaries, it’s also about working with young filmmakers.

“We’ll be connected with students at all levels of education, from college down to elementary school, who are interested in filmmaking,” he said.

A launch party was held Tuesday night at MERGE to publicly kick-start the organization and preview its first project, a film called “Stout Hearted,” which centers on Winterset, Iowa, native George Stout.

Stout led the Monuments Men, a group that saved more than 5 million pieces of art the Nazis had stolen during World War I and hidden in a salt mine in Belgium. After the war, Stout completed his undergraduate degree at UI.

New Mile has plans to make more documentaries on stories and figures with strong Iowa roots and global impacts, though Kelley said at the moment nothing is being formally announced.

New Mile funding manager and Board of Directors member Jen Knights said the company intends to focus not on what will make the most money but where the best stories are.

“There isn’t someone else telling stories about people in Iowa who have had a big impact in the world and doing it from a nonprofit standpoint,” Knights said. “We’re doing it for the sake of the story, for the sake of letting the world know that Iowa is the generator of amazing people and stories.”

UI Belin-Blank Center Administrator David Gould, a friend and longtime colleague of Kelley’s, said he is just the person to tell these stories because of his ability to find the heartbeat of a story and express it.

“He’s an incredibly talented storyteller because he cares about his films making meaningful differences,” Gould said. “For Kevin, retirement will be doing more of the things he loves to do. It’s a new chapter as opposed to the end of a career.”

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