Based on the bestselling book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky will premiere as a special presentation on Independent Lens in October 2012. The project is a cornerstone of the Women and Girls Lead campaign and was on display at last week’s PBS Annual Meeting in Denver.

Just back from the PBS annual meeting in Denver and was absolutely thrilled by the response from stations to the upcoming Half the Sky series, which will air on October 1 and 2 as a special presentation of Independent Lens.

This project has been several years in the making, taking up the ambitious work of New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn who wrote Half the Sky to highlight the challenges that women and girls are facing worldwide — issues like trafficking, maternal health, female genital mutilation, and gender based violence.

It’s hard stuff, but the approach of both Nick and Sheryl — and by the incredible filmmakers who have taken this book and turned it into a transmedia project — have tapped into the message that ‘women are not the problem, they’re the solution.’

Watch Women Are Not the Problem, They Are the Solution on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

The luncheon event to roll out Half the Sky was powerful in itself, with remarks from the CEOs of CPB (Patricia Harrison), PBS (Paula Kerger), and ITVS (Sally Jo Fifer), along with Nick and Sheryl, Meg Ryan and Olivia Wilde — two of the six celebrity advocates who traveled with this project, and two incredible women from the film, Rebecca and Jane, who live in Kenya and shared their personal stories. Plus, filmmakers Maro Chermayeff, Jamie Gordon, Mikaela Beardsley, and Mira Chang were also on hand.

If the response from the conference is any indicator, Half the Sky will have a big impact on audiences when it airs this fall. Stay tuned!

Read another ringing endorsement of Half the Sky and its impact at the PBS Annual Meeting from Current

Find out more about ITVS’s Women and Girls Lead campaign

The visuals for “Lexicon” are stunning, particularly the mosaic-like compositions that marry photographs, text, animation and video interview in a truly unique way. How did you develop this unique aesthetic?

The Italian images in my book “SLOW” began as a happy accident. I quickly learned that a single image was not enough. Not only were my images too small, but they also lacked the ability to convey the concept of “time,” of the beginning, middle and end of things. The idea of capturing hundreds of images, at times over long periods of time, then creating mosaics seemed like the only solution.

The decision to overlay these images with text came at about the same time. I wanted to convey what these people said to me as I worked. I wanted to share their insights, their observations. And I also wanted to solve another problem I had with photographs, namely that they often left so much unanswered. I wanted to provide as much information as possible within an image, to create what someone once called a “flat film,” a single image that actually uses time, that tells a story.

Regarding my typographic process: after completing a photo collage, my staff assembles a list of every possible question a viewer might ask, ranging from “What’s that strange thing in the corner of the picture?” to “How does that machine work?” to “What is that person thinking?” After our subjects answer these questions their words are meticulously applied to the image. The process is lengthy. One image with noted farmer/photographer Michael Ableman — from taking the initial photographs to building the photo collage with text — took over a year to complete. The result is a handmade and hopefully authentic artifact that explains a fundamental principle of sustainability in highly personal terms.

Read the entire story at Bay Area Bites

Kaing Guek Eav (alias Duch) is a Jekyll-and-Hyde character who began as a mathematics teacher, and then became the commandant of Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia, ultimately responsible for the torture and murder of 14,000 people. Comrade Duch: The Bookkeeper of Death recounts his flight, conversion to evangelical Christianity, and how he was finally brought to justice before an international tribunal. Watch the trailer after the jump.

Comrade Duch: The Bookkeeper of Death airs this Sunday, May 20 on WORLD at 10PM EST.

The Lexicon of Sustainability is based on a simple premise: people can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t even know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability.

For the past three years Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton have crisscrossed the USA to learn this new language of sustainability from its foremost practitioners in food and farming.  Alice Waters on edible schoolyards.  Wes Jackson on reinventing wheat farming.  Joel Salatin on embracing the value of saner farming practices.  Vandana Shiva on the global imperative of protecting seeds.  Paul Stamets on how mushrooms can save the world.  Will Allen on Food Security.  Temple Grandin on the humane slaughter of animals.  Farmer John on the revolutionary idea of community-supported agriculture.

In all, nearly two hundred leaders in food and farming from across the country have contributed their valued experiences to this rapidly growing Lexicon of Sustainability.  These insights have been translated into large format “information art” photo collages,  a series of short films, and pop up shows across the USA.  Study guides, a book, and lastly a social network of good ideas, a place where people can dig deeper into these terms (and even add to our ever-evolving lexicon), are also under development.

Today’s featured video takes a look into the “The Story of an Egg”. Follow poultry farmers David Evans and Alexis Koefoed as they explain the real meaning behind such terms as “cage free,” “free range,” and “pasture raised” so that consumers can make informed decisions when they go to their local supermarket:

Watch The Story of an Egg on PBS. See more from The Lexicon of Sustainability.

By illuminating the vocabulary of sustainable agriculture, and with it the conversation about America’s rapidly evolving food culture, the Lexicon of Sustainability educates, engages, and activates people to pay closer attention to how they eat, what they buy, and where their responsibility begins for creating a healthier, safer food system in America. Audiences are encouraged to participate by adding and defining their own words of sustainability to the lexicon, curating a Pop-Up show in their own communities, and joining a social network of individuals all key in driving the sustainability revolution.

Click here to learn more about the Lexicon of Sustainability, watch the short films, and explore terms!

In Life Begins at Rewirement — Simon Ender struggles with his decision to commit his elderly mother into a revolutionary nursing home alternative that has solved the rapidly growing Senior Citizen overpopulation. Learn more about the short by filmmaker Trevin Matcek in this recently produced BTB interview, after the jump.

What do you really know about Joseph Kony? On Wednesday we will be hosting a live online screening and discussion of the documentary Peace vs. Justice, going beyond the slick marketing of KONY 2012 and taking an in-depth look at the rebel leaders responsible for the most egregious of human-rights abuses – kidnapping children and forcing them to fight.

Peace vs. Justice examines the International Criminal Court’s investigation of the LRA and takes a critical look at the problems of applying Western ideas of justice and reconciliation to other countries and continents.

Join us for a social screening of Peace vs. Justice with filmmaker Klaartje Quirijns, who will be taking part in the screening to talk about the film and take your questions live.

Participants can join for free by signing in with Facebook or directly on the site, interacting with other viewers and panelists in real-time, while watching the film. Viewers can comment, ask questions, take polls, and even express their feelings about what they’re watching through a variety of tools on the site. This is an entirely new way of experiencing documentary films and it is inherently social.

Peace vs. Justice: May 16, 2012 at 5PM PT/ 8PM ET

Navajo Astronaut Tazbah Redhouse is a pilot on the first spaceship sent to colonize Mars. But a mysterious dream the night before her departure indicates there may be more to her mission than she understands. Watch filmmaker Nanobah Becker’s The 6th World, free on futurestates.tv.

Filmmaker Klaartje Quirijns

Peace vs. Justice director Klaartje Quirijns and producer Stacy Sullivan discuss Invisible Children’s Stop Kony 2012 video, the ICC, and the importance of continued discussion around international justice. Global Voices premieres on Sunday, May 6, with Peace vs. Justice on the World Channel. An online social screening and chat will be held on May 16 with the filmmakers and experts to discuss issues raised in the film. That event will take place here.

By now, anybody who has access to the internet has probably heard of Joseph Kony, thanks to the unprecedented success of Invisible Children’s Stop Kony 2012 video. Kony’s rise from obscure Ugandan warlord to a household name is nothing short of remarkable and Invisible Children deserves accolades for raising awareness about Kony’s crimes.

But Kony wasn’t really such an obscure figure before the release of Invisible Children’s video. He was, after all, the very first person to have been indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) – an institution that was created to go after those responsible for the worst crimes in the world. The Lord’s Resistance Army’s murderous rampage through Northern Uganda with an army of abducted children had already turned Kony into one of the world’s greatest villains.

If Kony had not already been indicted by the ICC, the Stop Kony 2012 video might have been a call for that to happen. The ICC, after all, was supposed to be the institution that would put a stop to impunity – make sure that future Pinochets, Milosevics, and Pol Pots of the world would be held accountable. If Kony had not already been indicted, calling for his indictment would have been a worthy advocacy goal.

But the ICC did indict Kony. Seven years ago. Following the indictment, the Ugandan military, with help from Sudanese and Congolese forces, and  even 100 military advisors from the United States, set out to arrest him. Essentially, all of the mechanisms in existence to hold men like Kony accountable for his crimes were activated. And yet, Kony remains at large, killing people to this day.

So what can the Invisible Children video really accomplish by raising awareness about Kony’s crimes? It’s hard to imagine that Stop Kony 2012 video will result in the United States sending special forces into the jungle to arrest an African warlord that has never posed a threat to US national interests. But maybe it can force the world to take a good, hard look at what went wrong in the Kony case and how the ICC might be more effective.

When the ICC issued its indictment of Kony in 2005, the LRA was actively engaged in peace talks with the Ugandan government, Once Kony and his henchmen were officially indicted, their incentive to make peace evaporated because Kony knew that if he negotiated, he would be arrested and sent to The Hague. So rather than negotiate, the LRA retrenched and continued its bloody war, establishing bases in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo where it continues to abduct children and commit atrocities.

Still from Peace vs. Justice

Perhaps if the ICC had not announced Kony’s indictment (which it did with great fanfare at a press conference), but rather kept it quiet, Kony would not have gone into hiding and Ugandan forces would have had a better chance of arresting him. The practice of issuing so-called “secret indictments” proved extremely effective to the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, whose suspects kept going into hiding every time an indictment was announced. But after the court  began quietly issuing indictments, Bosnian and NATO forces were able to apprehend dozens of war crimes suspects.

The people of northern Uganda initially had high hopes that the ICC’s indictment would put an end to the nightmare they had been living. But when they heard the ICC didn’t have a force that could come in and arrest Kony, they were quickly disillusioned. In order to arrest Kony and his top commanders, the ICC would have to work through national armies and the Ugandan army – even with outside help – proved to be no match for a devious and clever fighter with intimate knowledge of the jungle.

As a result, many, if not most, people in Northern Uganda have lost faith in the ICC and view it as a Western colonial operation interfering with their affairs. They rightly view it as a paper tiger and want to administer their own forms of justice, consistent with their culture, that are rooted in reconciliation, not punishment.

Still from Peace vs. Justice

But this could change if Kony were actually arrested and sent to the Hague for trial.  Perhaps if the ICC could, say, call on a special UN force to arrest its suspects, it would have a better chance of success. That may be a pipe dream, but if we accept the premise of an international court, even an imperfect one, we must discuss how arrest warrants should be enforced.

We hope the Invisible Children video results in Kony’s arrest. But we also hope it provokes a more nuanced and complex discussion about international justice, a discussion that can eclipse the hype and feel-goodism of viral videos and truly help the people that are directly involved in the Kony case as well as future victims of despots yet unknown.

Thursday marks the end of the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival, which featured three ITVS funded documentary films, including Bitter Seeds, The Invisible War, and The Waiting Room.

Still from Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey (credit: Ninfa Z. Bito)

The 55th San Francisco International Film Festival is closing tonight on a high note, celebrating their festival journey with…. well, Journey! After a rousing screening of Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey at the Castro Theatre, including what is bound to be a fascinating Q&A with director Ramona S. Diaz (director of the ITVS funded documentaries Imelda and The Learning) and all five members of the band Journey, closing night attendees will head on over to SLOANE SQUARE[D], for a night of entertainment, dancing, food, and drinks.

The past 15 days have gone by so fast that it is hard to believe that another festival has come and gone. With more than 200 films screened and more than 45 countries represented, the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival proved once again to be an extraordinary showcase of innovation and cinematic discovery.

One particular highlight for ITVS was that The Waiting Room director Peter Nicks was featured on the festival’s Scoop du Jour website, a daily video feed presenting coverage of the happenings at the festival. In the interview, Nicks discusses his documentary The Waiting Room, an intimate and intense day-in-the-life documentary portrait of the patients, doctors, nurses, and social workers at Highland Hospital in Oakland. Check out the clip after the jump:

To learn more about the 55th San Francisco International Film Festival, click here.

In a future where schools are segregated by economic status, a struggling mother must decide whether to sell her own organs to give her children a better education. Learn more about Crossover from filmmaker Tina Mabry in a recently conducted Skype interview, after the jump.