Cecilia Peck and Inbal Lessner, creators of the Starz docuseries “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult,” will join the Girls Club for a conversation on Tuesday, November 17, at 3 p.m. EST. The event is open to the public. Be sure to register in advance.
Founded by Women and Hollywood publisher and founder Melissa Silverstein, the Girls Club is a community for women creatives, culture-changers, and storytellers to connect, create, network, advocate, support, and redefine entertainment. The Girls Club is offering a one-month membership free of charge when you sign up. If you identify as a woman and would like an invitation to this community, please email girlsclubnetwork@gmail.com and let us know a bit about who you are and what you do.
Find Girls Club event details, bios for Peck and Lessner, and “Seduced’s” synopsis and trailer below.
Synopsis: This four-part documentary series chronicles the extraordinary and harrowing journey of India Oxenberg — the daughter of a Hollywood actress and a descendant of European royalty — who was seduced into the modern-day sex-slave cult NXIVM, where she spent seven years.
Over 17,000 people, including India, enrolled in NXIVM’s “Executive Success Programs,” a front for the cult and a hunting ground for its leader, master predator Keith Raniere. Women in DOS, a secret master-slave society within NXIVM, were sex-trafficked and branded with a cauterizing iron.
Both about recovery from trauma and about a mother trying to save her daughter, the series follows India’s seduction, indoctrination, enslavement, and ultimately her escape. It candidly explores how India and a chorus of other women are still grappling to make sense of their experience.
Bio for Peck: Emmy-nominated Cecilia Peck is the director, writer, and executive producer of “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult.” Peck directed and produced the Netflix Original feature documentary “Brave Miss World,” the story of former Miss World Linor Abargil’s journey to break the silence around rape. She also directed and produced “Shut Up & Sing,” a film about country music superstars the Dixie Chicks and the backlash resulting from their outspoken stance against the invasion of Iraq in 2003. “Shut Up & Sing” won Best Documentary at the Sydney, Aspen, and Woodstock Film Festivals — along with numerous critics’ awards — and it was shortlisted for the Academy Awards® for Best Documentary.
Peck produced “A Conversation With Gregory Peck,” about her actor and humanitarian father, and she directed and produced the documentary short “Justice for All,” an examination of capital punishment. She was associate producer of “Defending Our Daughters,” a nonfiction film about women’s human rights for Lifetime Television, which was honored with the Voices of Courage Award by the Women’s Refugee Commission.
As an actress, Peck was nominated for a Golden Globe® Award for her performance in “The Portrait.” Among other roles, she played the lead in “Torn Apart.” Peck speaks around the world about rape awareness and prevention as well as overcoming trauma with the #IAmBrave educational screening series for Brave Miss World. She also manages the website www.bravemissworld.com, a safe place for survivors of rape and assault to share their stories and seek support and resources. The website serves over 10 million survivors worldwide. Peck is a member of the documentary branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and she sits on the board of the San Diego International Film Festival. She is in preproduction for a documentary about President Nixon’s infamous “Enemies List.”
Bio for Lessner: Inbal B. Lessner, ACE, is an Emmy- and Eddie-nominated editor and producer. On her latest project, “Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult,” she takes on the roles of lead editor, writer, and executive producer.
Lessner and Peck’s last collaboration was the Emmy®-nominated feature documentary “Brave Miss World,” which debuted on Netflix in 2014. It is the story of an Israeli beauty queen who was raped seven weeks prior to her winning the Miss World pageant and her crusade to reach out to fellow survivors while trying to keep her own rapist behind bars.
In 2019, Lessner edited and coproduced “The Movies” (“The Golden Age” episode). This was the latest in her four-year-long collaboration with the team that produced CNN’s Emmy®-nominated “Decades” series. She has edited seven episodes in the series, and she was nominated for an ACE Editing Award for “The Nineties” episode “Can We All Get Along?”
Lessner’s editing credits include “ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke,” which was nominated for an Outstanding Documentary NAACP Image Award, as well as “Autism: The Sequel,” a follow-up to the Emmy®-winning “Autism: The Musical.” She edited and coproduced the internationally acclaimed, award-winning “I Have Never Forgotten You,” a documentary about Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. She also directed the docudrama “Night Bites,” and she was second-unit producer on the HBO/ARTE documentary Watermarks.
Over the course of her career, Lessner has worked in the cutting rooms of directors such as Tracy Droz Tragos (“Be Good, Smile Pretty”) and Natalie Portman (“A Tale of Love and Darkness”).
https://youtu.be/IqcNp4UFnnM
