Category Archives: Awards

ITVS Honored at the 72nd Annual Peabody Awards

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Summer Pasture and the Why Poverty? series were among the programs honored on Monday at the George Foster Peabody Awards in New York City. Administered by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Peabody is one of the most prestigious honors in electronic media.

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The 72nd Annual Peabody Award Luncheon on Monday, May 20, 2013. Courtesy of Lois Vossen.

Summer Pasture and two of the documentaries from the Why Poverty? series, ITVS-funded Park Avenue and Solar Mamas, aired on Independent Lens in 2012, representing the only PBS programming to be recognized at this year’s ceremony. Independent Lens Senior Series Producer Lois Vossen attended the luncheon and accepted the Summer Pasture award on behalf of the filmmakers, who were unable to attend:

“It was an honor to attend the Peabody Awards to accept a Peabody on behalf of Lynn True, Nelson Walker, and Tsering Perlo for their beautiful film Summer Pasture. Independent Lens was also awarded a Peabody for Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream and Solar Mamas, which broadcast as part of the Why Poverty? series. Winning PBS’s two Peabody Awards this year is further indication of the extraordinary and extraordinarily important work independent filmmakers do. Their unyielding passion and commitment to journalism makes them a vital part of public television. We need their voices now more than ever. It also didn’t hurt that Judd Apatow told me today how much he loves Independent Lens and that it is one of his favorite series!” Continue reading →

Two ITVS Programs Win Peabody Awards

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Summer Pasture and the Why Poverty? series were among the ITVS programs to earn the George Foster Peabody Awards this year. Administered by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Peabody is one of the most prestigious honors in electronic media.

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Congratulations to the filmmakers on this incredible achievement! This brings the total of Peabody awards for ITVS films to 24.

Summer Pasture, an Independent Lens program, is the unique love story of Locho and Yama, nomadic herders in Tibet faced with a difficult choice as their way of life begins to give way to the modern world.

Why Poverty? is a collection of eight films, co-productions of ITVS and STEPS International, that are part of a global cross-media project aimed at raising awareness of poverty in America and around the world.

The Peabody Awards will be presented May 20, 2013 at a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City with Scott Pelley, anchor of The CBS Evening News, as this year’s emcee.

Vote for Your Favorite #SheDoc by March 31st

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Throughout March, we’ve been watching the 10 free films in the #SheDocs Online Film Festival for Women’s History Month. Now, with only one week to go, we’re asking you – our #SheDocs fans – to vote for your favorite festival film. Here is your chance to tell the filmmakers and the women and girl film stars that you appreciate them! Vote for your favorite #SheDoc until March 31st.

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Use your vote to tell us which story inspired you to do something, learn more, or take on a new challenge. Perhaps Cheryl Haworth motivated you to hit the weight room or Chahinaz compelled you to ask more questions. Maybe Jessie Little Doe gave you a new appreciation for language, Barbara Smith Conrad sparked a love for opera, or Rafea convinced you to take up tech. Or perhaps you learned something new about Patsy Mink, Leymah Gbowee, or Gloria Steinem.  It’s quite possible you even cheered out loud when Starr’s baby was born or when Sabere declared, “I will never bring tea to you again!” If our #SheDocs moved you in anyway, then vote! We’ll announce the winner on the Women and Girls Lead Facebook page on April 1st.

Although March is almost over, we think every month deserves an empowering selection of documentary films about women and girls. We plan to keep the #SheDocs page and Twitter hashtag live as a destination to find the latest documentaries from the Women and Girls Lead campaign available to watch temporarily online. Bookmark itvs.org/women-and-girls-lead/shedocs and visit us every month to find new films streaming online for free.

Oscar Nominees for Best Doc Include: The Invisible War & 5 Broken Cameras

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Early Thursday morning, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this year’s Oscar nominees. Among the films selected for best documentary were two ITVS programs: The Invisible War by Kirby Dick (coming to Independent Lens on May 27) and 5 Broken Cameras by filmmakers Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi. Please join us in congratulating the filmmakers and watch the trailers below:

The winners will be named at the 85th Academy Awards ceremony in Hollywood on February 24, 2013. To see a complete list of nominated films, please click here. 

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry Scores a duPont Award

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Fourteen winners of the Alfred I. duPont- Columbia Awards were announced Wednesday morning by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, by filmmaker Alison Klayman, will premiere on Independent Lens in February 2013.

The documentary is an intimate and compelling portrayal of an extraordinary artist on the cusp of history in China. Ai Weiwei is arguably the most internationally celebrated Chinese artist of the modern era. At heart, he is a troublemaker with a serious agenda: to challenge the oppression of the Chinese people by their government with rebellious and irreverent gestures. His activism has cost him his freedom repeatedly, but he never seems to lose his childlike approach to serious dissidence executed with a wink.

In Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, filmmaker Alison Klayman presents an insightful look at China and its transition in a digital age.

Find the complete list of winners here and watch the trailer for Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry after the jump. Continue reading →

Google Recognizes the Geena Davis Institute’s Commitment to Women and Girls

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Women and Girls Lead partner, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, has been selected by Google to receive the inaugural Global Impact Award.

The Global Impact Awards support organizations using technology and innovative approaches to tackle some of the world’s toughest human challenges.  The Geena Davis Institute will be one of seven organizations to receive the $1.2 million grant.  The award will be used to support the development of new software to analyze gender portrayals on screen, allowing previously time-intensive research to scale globally and accelerating the positive representation of female characters in children’s media.

Although the world’s population is more than 50 percent female, women are outnumbered by males three to one in U.S. media and five to one behind the camera. Additionally, female characters are six times more likely to be depicted in family films as partially nude with extremely tiny waists or sexually-suggestive clothing.

What kids see on television at a young age has very real effects on their development and social and cultural behaviors and beliefs. These negative images contribute to increased likelihood for girls to have poor academic performance, body image issues, early sexual behavior, and less promising life and occupational choices. Continue reading →

ITVS Docs Hold Their Own at the 2012 IDA Awards

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Well, it looks like some holiday cheer came early for two ITVS films! Both The Island President and Bitter Seeds won awards at the 2012 IDA Documentary Awards.

The IDA Documentary Awards celebrate outstanding achievement in documentary filmmaking and on Friday night in Los Angeles, two ITVS films received special recognition at the 28th annual IDA Awards Gala. The Island President picked up the Pare Lorentz Award, while Bitter Seeds was awarded the Humanitas Documentary Award.

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The Island President by Jon Shenk

Humanitas Documentary Award
Bitter Seeds by Micha Peled

Please join us in congratulating the filmmakers!

The Academy Award Shortlist Has Been Announced and ITVS Couldn’t Be Happier!

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What a week for ITVS! First the Sundance Film Festival announced the lineup for 2013, then Time Magazine showed Invisible War some love in their “Top Movies of 2012”, the National Board of Review listed three ITVS funded films in their “Top 5 Documentaries”, and now the Academy Award shortlist is out!

Before anyone walks down any red carpets or starts penning acceptance speeches, the Academy names a number of films (15 to be exact!) to advance in order to help narrow down the voting process for Best Documentary Feature. With over 126 films in contention for the Oscar, ITVS is more than a little excited to see some very familiar titles on the Academy Award shortlist:

The field will be narrowed to five titles when the Oscar nominations are announced in early January.

‘The Island President’ to Receive IDA Pare Lorentz Award

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Originally posted on Documentary.org.

This year, the esteemed Pare Lorentz Award will go to The Island President, directed by John Shenk. Each year, the International Documentary Association gives this award to a film that demonstrates concern for the appropriate use of the natural environment, justice for all and the illumination of pressing social problems. Previous winners of the Pare Lorentz Awards include The Last Mountain, Wasteland, and An Inconvenient Truth.

IDA’s Pare Lorentz Award recipient The Island President, directed by Jon Shenk, is the story of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives. Nasheed brings democracy to the Maldives after thirty years of despotic rule, but faces an even greater challenge: rising sea levels threatening to submerge the 1200 islands of the Maldives enough to make them uninhabitable.

The Island President captures Nasheed’s first year of office, culminating in his trip to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009. When hope fades for a written accord to be signed, Nasheed makes a stirring speech, which salvages an agreement. Despite the modest size of his country, Mohamed Nasheed has become one of the leading international voices for urgent action on climate change. The Island President is produced by Bonni Cohen and Richard Berge, and Executive Produced by Jon Else.

Jon Shenk is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and founder of Actual Films who has spent his career telling socially-relevant stories with a human touch. He was the Director of Photography for the Academy Award-winning Smile Pinki (2009). He was awarded an Emmy for Blame Somebody Else (2007), a feature story about human trafficking which he wrote, produced and photographed for PBS. Continue reading →

ITVS Filmmakers Awarded MacArthur Genius Grants

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The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation gave 23 awards this year. The two awards for filmmakers went to ITVS documentarians.

Two ITVS filmmakers, Natalia Almada and Laura Poitras, have been awarded MacArthur “genius” grants, which include a no-strings-attached, five-year award of $500,000 and an enormous pat on the back from America’s intellectual community.

“You usually have to apply for something, and it’s a lot of work,” Natalia Almada, producer-director of El General (2009), told the New York Times. “It’s such freedom to think I can count on something. It’s huge. It’s validating.”
Continue reading →