Archive for March, 2010
Filmmaker Byron Hurt Turns Lens on Soul Food
This month marks National Nutrition Month –– an annual campaign sponsored by the American Dietetic Association designed to focus attention on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits. ITVS recently funded filmmaker Byron Hurt (Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes) for his latest documentary Soul Food Junkies, which explores the health advantages and disadvantages of soul food –– a quintessential American cuisine. Read Byron’s blog post below to get his personal connection to the subject.
In 2007, my father passed away from pancreatic cancer. One of the many factors leading to pancreatic cancer is a high fat, meat-based diet. My father’s diet consisted of both. While I am not certain that my father’s diet alone contributed to his disease, his illness capped off what had been my lifelong concern for him: his health.
From the earliest time that I can remember, my father was overweight. He loved to eat and he particularly loved soul food. He also loved fast food and sugary desserts, like many people do. Growing up, I wanted to be just like my father so I ate what he ate: grits and eggs covered with cheese and topped with bits of salt pork and bacon for breakfast; overcooked collard greens seasoned with ham hocks, fried pork chops, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, or other delicious but fatty foods right out of the black southern tradition.
In college, though, I began to slowly change my eating habits after learning more about how to eat healthy. I stopped eating red meat and pork and did my best to avoid greasy fried foods. On weekends, when I came home from college, I began to confront my father about his eating habits, often to no avail. I’d challenge him about his food choices. He’d ridicule me for no longer eating beef or pork. We had several tense conversations about his weight. My family and I were concerned he would one day suffer a heart attack or a stroke. We wanted my dad to live a long, healthy life so he could be here to one day meet his grandchildren. Eventually he would make small changes to his diet and began to exercise more, but unfortunately the changes came too late in his life. Doctors diagnosed him with terminal pancreatic cancer and he died at the young age of 63. He never got a chance to meet his first grandchild.
Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas) Premiering Tonight on Independent Lens on PBS
“With brave and brutal honesty, [Filmmaker Monika] Navarro, 31, turns the camera on her own clan as she explores a family history that embodies the best and worst of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.”
- Hispanic Magazine
Augie and Gino were living the American dream — raised and educated in the United States and proud veterans of the U.S. military. But in 1999, these two brothers were forced to leave the only country they’d ever known and had pledged to protect. Follow filmmaker Monika Navarro on her familial journey to Mexico as she pieces together the tragic events of her uncles’ deportation and opens a Pandora’s box of family secrets.
Check out a preview of tonight’s broadcast below:
Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas) premieres tonight, Tuesday, March 23 at 10:00 on Independent Lens on PBS (check local listings). A co-production of ITVS in association with WGBH-Boston and LPB.
Community Cinema Screens Dirt! The Movie in New York
Last night, Community Cinema hosted a screening of the Independent Lens film Dirt! The Movie in New York City’s Central Park. The film looks at how industrial farming, mining, and urban development have endangered soil and resulted in cataclysmic droughts, starvation, floods, and climate change. New York City Department of Parks & Recreation is presenting five Independent Lens documentaries this season as part of the Community Cinema line-up. Find out what happened at the event from Christina Dookwah who helped organize the event.
Community Cinema screening of Dirt! The Movie in New York City's Central Park.
The screening was packed with people eager to hear from Bill Benenson, co-director and producer of Dirt! The Movie, and William Bryant Logan, author of the book on which the movie was based.
Dirt! The Movie tells the story of Earth’s most valuable source of fertility –– its soil. Experts from around the world who study dirt –– and developed a beneficial relationship with soil –– were interviewed in the film.
We were fortunate to have two experts join us for a post-screening discussion about the critical issues highlighted in the film. Bill Benenson, who has more than 30 years of producing and directing experience, has worked on such documentaries The Marginal Way, Diamond Rivers, as well as the critically-acclaimed narrative film Mister Johnson. He gains much of his inspiration for his work from once serving in the Peace Corps and as an initial investor in Seeds of Change. He is also active in the National Resources Defense Council, Rainforest Action Network, and Ploughshares.
Our other panelist, William Bryant Logan, is founder and president of Urban Arborists, a leading tree care firm and is a certified arborist with the International Society of Arboriculture. His book, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth inspired the documentary.
Be sure to come out to Community Cinema screenings either in New York City or one of the 60 plus locations nationwide. It’s a great opportunity to meet others in your community and get a sneak peek of what’s coming up on Independent Lens.
Christina Dookwah
New York City Department of Parks & Recreation
Q&A with ITVS Programming Manager Karim Ahmad About FUTURESTATES
FUTURESTATES – ITVS’s new online fictional series — recently launched and had its theatrical premiere at South by Southwest (SXSW). The San Francisco Film Society interviewed ITVS Programming Manager Karim Ahmad about the series, which it described as a “forward thinking initiative.” Check out the Q&A below from their blog SF360.org.
Greg Pak's Mister Green, created for ITVS's FUTURESTATES, is a parable about change.
When you think of public television in the United States, science fiction, or any type of fiction, may not spring to mind.
Independent Television Services (ITVS) is trying to change that perception by creating a series of 11 fictional mini-features on American society in the not-too-distant future. Launched March 8 as an immersive destination website to be available for free via streaming video with subsequent distribution on pbs.org, FUTURESTATES feautres directors such as Greg Pak (Robot Stories) and Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo) thinking into the future while staying tethered to current events. The series dropped down on the South by Southwest and San Francisco International Asian American film festival this past month, and after viewing two of the mini-features at an event held at the Jellyfish Gallery in SOMA sponsored by Next American City magazine and ITVS, I sat down with FUTURESTATES programming manager Karim Ahmad to talk about the forward-thinking initiative.
SF360: You mentioned something at the event launching the series about only having the filmmakers project a little bit into the future, not going 100 years from now but more so 10, 15 into the future.
Karim Ahmad: Well, there’s definitely some variance from film to film. One film Plastic Bag which was directed by Ramin Bahrani . . . you follow a plastic bag as it goes home with its ‘maker,’ the woman who takes it home from the store. It lives with this woman for a period of months until it gets thrown away eventually. And then it goes to a landfill where it’s buried for years and years, an unforeseeable amount of time. And then when it finally becomes free . . . .
At SXSW with ITVS Programming Manager Karim Ahmad
Held annually in Austin, Texas, South By Southwest (SXSW) is considered one of the world’s premiere festivals, recognizing the best of film, music and interactive projects. ITVS Programming Manager Karim Ahmad gives some of the highlights from ITVS’s participation –– including the FUTURESTATES theatrical world premiere.
Programming Manager Karim Ahmad.
Matthew Meschery, ITVS director of digital initiatives, discusses FUTURESTATES at the SXSW trade show.
Preparation for a trip to the SXSW film festival usually entails digging through their program guide jam-packed full of screenings and panels and the like, and trying to figure out how to fit it all in. Soon thereafter, you realize that fitting it all in is a Sisyphean exercise –– it’s just plain impossible. This year in particular was a real banner year for ITVS at SXSW because we had the great pleasure and privilege of presenting the theatrical premiere of FUTURESTATES, our new series of short films, at the festival.
The films premiered Sunday evening to a huge crowd and some very animated reactions in the Austin Convention Center’s 500-seat G-Tech Theater. For me, it was a real thrill after over a year of developing these projects with the filmmakers, to finally get to watch these films with an audience and see how people relate to these innovative new stories about life in a future America.
Of course, the hordes of people who attended our opening didn’t get there all on their own. We had our work cut out for us getting people to the screening (see the aforementioned scheduling impossibilities). Luckily, in addition to me pounding the pavement from screening to screening promoting the FUTURESTATES premiere –– a tall order, when one is pre-occupied with reaching out to the next round of prospective FUTURESTATES applicants –– I also helped out our communications team. They manned a booth at the festival trade show, which was decked out to the nines in full FUTURESTATES regalia. At the booth, we screened some of the films; had a “Predict-O-Meter” station, where folks could enter their predictions into the interactive timeline; and of course, a generous supply of FUTURESTATES-branded microwave popcorn (must-have for any trade show booth).
Filmmaker Aldo Velasco at FUTURESTATES World Premiere at SXSW
Last weekend, FUTURESTATES had its theatrical world premiere at South by Southwest (SXSW). These narrative mini-features explore many of today’s complex social issues by imagining how they play out in the world of tomorrow. Find out what happened at the screening from Aldo Velasco, filmmaker of the FUTURESTATES episode Tent City.
Actor Mikel Chase with Aldo Velasco after the FUTURESTATES screening at SXSW.
When I learned that my film Tent City would be screening at SXSW as part of the FUTURESTATES presentation, I was editing a feature film in production in a jungle in India, near the Bhutanese border. I wanted to go to Austin but wasn’t sure if it was worth it; I’d have to leave production a week early, then travel for three and a half days around the globe to make it in time.
It was a crapshoot, because festival screenings are often a bit of a letdown. You arrive full of high hopes, but audiences rarely provide the kind of rapturous response that every filmmaker craves. But I had to see Tent City in front of an audience. This might be my only chance, because the FUTURESTATES shorts were created for Internet broadcast. Would my film’s complex story-within-a-story structure play in front of a crowd? One thing was for sure: I myself would not be able to enjoy my own screening. I’d be too nervous and too hypersensitive to the audience’s mood to relax.
But on Sunday, March 14, I was very pleasantly surprised. My film –– in fact all the films –– looked gorgeous splayed onto that stadium-sized screen at the Austin Convention Center. My previous digital shorts had looked a bit fuzzy when blown up to the silver screen. But Tent City, which was shot on the RED camera by the very talented Mathew Rudenberg, looked breathtaking –– at least to me! A large portion of my film is composed of black and white stills, used to relay a futuristic science-fiction story in the manner of Chris Marker’s La Jetée. With their inky blacks and icy whites, these stark still images surpassed all my expectations for the force of their narrative power.
Watch the FUTURESTATES series trailer:
Community Cinema Screens Dirt! The Movie in West Hollywood
Last night, Community Cinema hosted a screening of the Independent Lens film Dirt! The Movie at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, Calif. The film looks at how industrial farming, mining, and urban development have endangered soil and resulted in cataclysmic droughts, starvation, floods and climate change. National Community Cinema Coordinator Desiree Gutierrrez gives an overview of what happened and discusses the local impact.
Tracy Fleischman, Lisa Smithline, and Andy Lipkis at the West Hollywood Community Cinema screening of Dirt! The Movie.
It’s early in the morning (okay, afternoon!) and I am still recovering from last night’s tremendously successful Community Cinema screening of Dirt! The Movie. Nearly 300 people gathered to watch the film at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, Calif. The evening started with a delicious organic, locally grown, zero-waste reception catered by Jennie Cooks Catering. As guests mingled with their glasses of California-grown, organic wine, filmmakers Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow greeted arriving guests such as Kathleen Kellogg Johnson (Kellogg Garden Products), and Denise Ritchie (Malibu Compost).
The audience was completely engaged with the film. A few audience members had to step out into the lobby to catch their breath and hold back their tears. One guest told me, “The film is amazing, but really hard to watch. We need to be simultaneously having a conversation about water rights and access to water. It’s simply not possible for everyone in the world to grow a little organic garden in their backyards if they don’t have water.”
Behind the Scenes of Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas)
Augie and Gino were living the American dream –– raised and educated in the United States and proud veterans of the military. But in 1999, these two brothers were forced to leave the only country they’d ever known and had pledged to protect. Airing next Tuesday, March 23 at 10:00 PM on Independent Lens on PBS, filmmaker Monika Navarro goes on a journey across the border to Mexico to piece together the tragic events of her uncles’ deportation and opens a Pandora’s box of family secrets.
Watch this exclusive behind-the-scenes video from Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas) in which Navarro explains the deeper themes of her film, including shifting definitions of “home” and “truth” in a family affected by addiction and deportation.
Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas) airs Tuesday, March 23 at 10:00 on Independent Lens on PBS (check local listings). A co-production of ITVS in association with WGBH-Boston and LPB.
Encore Presentation of Butte, America Tonight on Independent Lens
“[Butte, America] is one of those films you just couldn’t imagine on commercial TV –– a tale about a Montana mining town that died more than a generation ago, a rich catalog of memory that ends in 1985, a story of tragedy and triumph that’s mostly played out before the invention of videotape.”
- Kansas City Star
You see the world differently when you work underground. That made Butte, Montana different right from the start as immigrants came from around the world to work the mines. But what they blasted out of the 10,000 miles of tunnels was more than just copper. It was the rise of unions and multinational corporations, and the seeds of the current debate over the environment.
Check out this behind-the-scenes video of Butte, America where the filmmakers talk about how they used recreations and interviews to evoke the most immediate emotional response from the audience.
Butte, America airs tonight, March 16, at 10:00 PM on Independent Lens on PBS (check local listings).
In the News: The Latest on ITVS Programs
“ITVS is best known for its financing of documentaries, many of which appear on PBS’s Independent Lens series. The organization will present [FUTURESTATES -- ] a series of brief, fictional films that cast social issues into the future, in the hopes of drawing a younger audience not necessarily interested in public television.”
Read more >>
“Toss the tea leaves; we can read our future in [Dirt! The Movie] — and the outlook is grimy.”
Read more >>
“Filmmaker Laura Poitras traveled to Yemen searching for a person who was returning from the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba… Her film, The Oath, tells Bahri’s story [Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard] and how he now favors a pen instead of a gun. It often delves into his confused emotions — he pledged the al-Qaida oath but no longer fights.”
Read more >>
Vice President and Independent Lens series producer Lois Vossen discusses the upcoming broadcasts Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas), and Whatever It Takes.
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