While returning home to New York on a flight from Asia in 1999, filmmaker Suki Stetson Hawley came across a brief magazine article.

MICHAEL GALINSKY/Special Contributor

Hockaday alumna Suki Stetson Hawley, with children Fiona (left) and Harper, created a film with her husband about Miami serial rapist Reynaldo Rapalo, which aired on A&E.

It was a blurb on Fortunate Son, a controversial book chronicling George W. Bush's rise in politics.

The subject became Ms. Hawley's first documentary, Horns and Halos, released in 2002.

"The article left me with a lot of questions. That's how our projects start – with questions that are left unanswered," the 1987 graduate of The Hockaday School in Dallas said by phone from her home in Brooklyn.

Horns and Halos received widespread acclaim and opened a career door for Ms. Hawley and her husband, director Michael Galinsky.

They went on to document serial rapist Reynaldo Rapalo in Code 33, which the A&E network aired this month under the title Miami Manhunt.

"When Cinemax bought Horns and Halos, it became widely seen, and that was gratifying," said Ms. Hawley, 37.

"As a filmmaker, you are always looking for a large audience to reach."

In making Code 33, the duo set out to make it suitable for television but with more of an edge than the average docudrama.

"Code 33 is a bracing jolt of reality TV-style filmmaking for [audiences] weary of the genre's shallow excesses," critic Eddie Cockrell wrote for Variety.

Ms. Hawley and Mr. Galinsky wanted to profile Miami-Dade police sketch artist Samantha Steinberg.

But during filming, the hunt for Mr. Rapalo – one of Ms. Steinberg's subjects – was a local daily headline, and that changed the filmmakers' focus.

"In Code 33, we tried to address the human side of this man who was terrorizing a community," Ms. Hawley said.

"We didn't want to attempt to make the audience like him, just understand the man behind this villain."

Ms. Hawley's first experience in filmmaking came through dabbling in music videos while at Hockaday.

"Suki started early in high school editing her own music videos, but the point to remember is this was VHS linear editing," said Ed Long, her former video editing teacher at Hockaday.

"You couldn't take out two or three seconds and tighten a shot. She clearly got her start with the discipline that this editing system imposed."

Ms. Hawley, a graduate of Connecticut's Wesleyan University, has returned to Hockaday on several occasions as a speaker.

And she's influenced the school's current video program, Mr. Long said.

"I was fortunate enough to be in a high school with video editing equipment. That wasn't very common in 1987," said Ms. Hawley, who returns to Dallas frequently to visit her family.

In 1994, through her combined love of music and filming, she created the narrative fiction film Half-Cocked, based on her husband's experience in a punk band.

The two met in 1993, when Ms. Hawley moved to New York after college.

"We wanted to capture the scene and put it in a box," Ms. Hawley said.

The desire to create a true documentary remained with Ms. Hawley.

It wasn't until 1999, while returning from an Asian film festival, that her goal was realized and production on Horns and Halos began.

Since then, Ms. Hawley and Mr. Galinsky formed their own New York-based distribution company, Rumur Inc. Their current project is based in Brooklyn, focusing on what a developer's push for a new sports arena will mean for the area in human terms.

"Again, we have a lot of questions," she said.

Mikki Kirby is a Dallas freelance writer.

E-mail mikkikirby@yahoo.com

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