Global Voices
Latino Art & Culture Shines in Visiones
Parts three and four of Visiones airs this Sunday on Global Voices on PBS World. The six-part series examines the richness and impact of Latino culture through the eyes of some of the most influential painters, musicians, dancers, and writers working in America today.
The film, directed by Hector Galan, explores everything from New York’s break-dancing community to the theater scene in Texas, offering a truly unique cross section of Latino artists working today.
Visiones weaves a tapestry of paintings, songs, dances, and spoken-word performances to reflect on how Latinos have impacted arts and culture.
Watch a clip from parts three and four of Visiones, airing this Sunday on Global Voices on PBS WORLD.
Visiones Kicks Off on Global Voices
Visiones: Latino Art and Culture, directed by Hector Galan
Visiones: Latino Art and Culture profiles some of the most influential painters, musicians, dancers, and writers working in America today. Parts one and two of the six-part series air this Sunday, August 15 on Global Voices on PBS WORLD.
Directed by Hector Galan, Visiones explores how contemporary Latino artists continue to build on rich traditions that reflect a unique multi-ethnic experience, taking established art forms and reinventing them, constantly challenging themselves and the communities that nurture them.
From New York City’s breakdancers to mural painters in Los Angeles to stage actors in Texas, the series offers a unique cross section of Latino artists working today.
Check out parts one and two of Visiones this Sunday on Global Voices.
Thunder in Guyana Strikes Global Voices
Power Couple: Janet Rosenberg and Dashing Cheddi Jagan
How did a 77-year-old Jewish woman from Chicago become the president of a South American country?
In Thunder in Guyana, airing this Sunday on Global Voices on PBS WORLD, filmmaker Suzanne Wasserman offers a compelling explanation.
Wasserman grew up fascinated by her glamorous cousin Janet, a Chicago native, who at 23 fell in love with a handsome dental student from a country no one in her family had even heard of. Together, the political power couple became known as the founders of modern Guyana, and in 1997, Janet Rosenberg became the first American-born woman to lead a nation.
Throughout the film, Wasserman uses interviews, family photos and archival footage to tell the story of her remarkable cousin: a tale of life-long love, political intrigue, and struggles to bring progressive policies to an adopted country.
The Forensic Files: Team Qatar’s Alex Just
Alex Just, second to the right, leads Team Qatar
Premiering Sunday, August 1 on Global Voices on PBS WORLD, Team Qatar introduces us to the world of competitive high school debate. Five team members from the Muslim nation of Qatar rally behind debate veteran Alex Just, who was only 22 when the film was shot. A former president of the Oxford Union, Just joined BTB for a conversation about the film. Note: Team Qatar is currently available for download to own and download to rent on iTunes.
First off, let’s go over the rules. This is not a debate or formal argument of any kind. At no point during the course of this conversation should you feel the need to contest anything I say or ask with fact, logic, or reason. Do you agree to these terms, Alex?
Yes. That sounds fine to me.
When was your first competitive debate?
When I was in high school, I was 13 and we had a debate club. On the first Friday of term, they have meetings for new members. And I can’t quite remember all of this, but my debate coach claims they had a game where you had to talk about any subject for a minute and I gave a speech about sausages. I spoke for a full minute and impressed my debate coach Mr. Wylie enough that he worked with me for six years and made me the debater I am today.
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Karate Kid Takes on Global Voices
Shadya airs on Global Voices Sunday, July 25
A young Muslim Israeli is trapped between her passion for karate and religious tradition in Shadya, airing this Sunday on Global Voices on PBS World (check local listings).
Directed by Roy Westler, the film takes place in Northern Israel and profiles a 17-year-old charismatic karate champion. Shadya is a rare breed, a feminist in a male-dominated culture and a Muslim Arab living in Israel.
As she grapples with the looming tension of an early marriage and her Palestinian identity, Shadya refuses to play by the rules of her traditional Muslim community.
Check out the trailer for Shadya ahead of the broadcast this Sunday.
This Week on Global Voices: The China-North Korea Border in Perspective
Last week, a North Korean border guard shot four Chinese citizens, killing three, near Dandong along the tense border between the two countries. This comes just over a year since Current TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling were arrested by North Korean guards at a different stretch of border in March of 2009 and sentenced to 12 years in a labor camp (former President Bill Clinton negotiated their release in August of the same year).
While China and North Korea historically have been politically and economically friendly, the increasingly erratic and provocative behavior of North Korea’s leadership has strained relations in recent years. That is precisely the story Chinese-born filmmaker Liang Zhao set out to tell when he went back to his childhood home in Dandong, situated on the border with North Korea. In his film Return to the Border, which airs beginning this Sunday on Global Voices (PBS WORLD), Liang goes back to his hometown only to find it vastly changed from his childhood decades ago. In the intervening years, North Korean President Kim Il-sung died and was succeeded by his son Kim Jong-il. China abandoned its isolationism and began trading with the West, further alienating its fellow communists in North Korea. North Koreans suffered a brutal famine, in which as many as 2 million died.
Liang talks Dandong residents and former North Korean citizens, and tours the border, even covertly entering North Korea to bear witness to the strange militarism of its culture and fearful behavior by its citizens. Border guards appear, and quietly ask for cigarettes and food. The film explores how borders are purely man-made barriers, and how common humanity transcends them on a daily basis.
Tune in to watch Return to the Border — premiering Sunday on Global Voices (check local listings)— for a glimpse into this controversial line on the map for context into the conflicts there that are making the news today.
Caviar with the Rat Brothers
Legendary fisherman Pa Drnda (aka the “King of Caviar”) can only watch in horror as his two sons drive the family business into the water. The Caviar Connection documents the epic pursuit of Ivan and Dragon (aka “The Rat Brothers”) as they troll along the Danube River in search for the one that got away. The elusive fish: a fat sturgeon whose eggs are worth big money or at least enough to abandon their small Serbian village for greener pastures.
The Caviar Connection airs Sunday, June 6 on Global Voices on PBS World. Check here for local listings.
You can also watch online at PBS.org.
Happy Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month from ITVS
"A Village Called Versailles" airs on the PBS Series Independent Lens on May 25th
This month we’re honoring Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month at ITVS by celebrating some of the groundbreaking films by and about the API community coming up in our broadcast schedule.
With the tragic oil spill encroaching on the coast of Louisiana, the upcoming premiere of A Village Called Versailles, by S. Leo Chiang on Independent Lens on May 25 promises to be especially cogent and poignant as a story of a Vietnamese American community in New Orleans facing down a massive ecological and socioeconomic disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Versailles is the most recent production in a long collaboration between ITVS and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), with whom we have co-produced a remarkable range of penetrating films in recent years.
Other ITVS and CAAM co-productions broadcasting this month include the Emmy-winning Sentenced Home (May 16 on Global Voices), Project Kashmir (May 18 on Independent Lens), and Independent Lens Audience Award-winner China Blue (May 23 on Global Voices).
Be sure to tune in for two other shows airing this month, too — Vietnam: The Next Generation and Teacher (which is already streaming in its entirety on the PBS.org video player).
Not sure which to watch? Take a peek inside: Clips and trailers for all of the titles airing this month are available now on the new ITVS.org video player.
Watch a preview of Project Kashmir airing next Tuesday, May 18 on Independent Lens (check local listings) >>
A Filmmaker Transformed by Her Subject
"Teacher" premieres Sunday, May 9 on Global Voices
Filmmaker Leslie Wiener-Legrand (Teacher, premiering May 9 on Global Voices on PBS WORLD, check local listings) went to Ho Chi Minh City fully intending to make a travel documentary about Vietnam for the Lonely Planet franchise. But as she spent time in the city scouting out locales to highlight for prospective tourists, she found it ever more difficult to ignore the poverty all around her — particularly the plight of the city’s thousands of street children, many of whom have AIDS.
As she found her lens drawn more and more to them and their stories, she met their guardian angel, Nguyen Van Hung, a former drug addict who came of age just as Saigon fell and who spent decades as an aimless street thug and heroin addict.
How did such an unlikely character end up dedicating his life to the stricken children of Vietnam’s capital? wondered Wiener-Legrand. She was captivated, and shifted her focus — literally — from travel guide to social documentary. But it wasn’t just her work that was transformed: it was herself, as well.
Watch this behind-the-scenes footage from the filmmaker as she explains how Nguyen taught her profound lessons in life, courage, death, generosity, and love as she made her film about him, Teacher.
(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding?
It’s that time again, indie film people. We’ve got a slate of international documentaries for the new season of Global Voices just itching to get all over your eyeballs. Global Voices was the first original series to launch on PBS WORLD three years ago, and we think it’s really hitting its stride.
The season debuts on Sunday, May 9 (Happy Mother’s Day!) on PBS WORLD (check local listings) with Teacher, a lyrical new documentary by Leslie Wiener-Legrand and Nick Hector about a former drug addict in Ho Chi Minh City who is now dedicated to helping the homeless street children of that city battle HIV and AIDS.
"Teacher" premiering Sunday, May 9 on PBS WORLD
We’re not going to lie, the lineup this season is pretty impressive. The films cover the globe from Serbia, Jordan, Romania, Armenia, Qatar, and beyond, offering viewers in the U.S. a chance to look inside the lives and hear the perspectives of people whose experiences are utterly different from their own. In a time of myriad global challenges, it can be helpful to get to know our global neighbors and rediscover our common humanity. And while there are plenty of serious sociopolitical topics covered in these films, there is also a healthy dose of humor, too. (Keep up with the series on our Global Voices Facebook page.)
Watch a preview of Teacher airing this Sunday, May 9th on PBS WORLD >>
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