Category Archives: Institutional Updates

ITVS Names Claire Aguilar as Executive Content Advisor

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ITVS is happy to announce that Vice President of Programming Claire Aguilar has been named Executive Content Advisor.

In this new consulting role, Claire will provide high-level, portfolio analysis and content feedback under the direction of Jim Sommers, Senior Vice President of Content and head of ITVS’ Content Strategy Team. With a focus on recommending content for ITVS International and selected public television series, Claire will also continue to co-curate programming for Independent Lens.

Previously, Claire served as head of ITVS’s programming department. She joined the organization in 2000 from public television station KCET/Los Angeles, where she programmed the station’s schedule and managed programming acquisitions. Earlier in her career, Claire worked as a film programmer at the UCLA Film and Television Archive, one of the leading exhibition venues for international documentary and classic Hollywood films. She has served as a programming consultant and panelist for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Rockefeller Foundation, the NEA, the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, and many other media and funding organizations. She has also led and participated in film juries for IDFA, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Silverdocs and Visions du Réel. Claire holds a Bachelor of Arts in Communications Studies and a Master of Arts in Film and Television Studies from UCLA. She serves on the board of Women Make Movies, STEPS International, and the EURODOC Steering Committee.

For more information, please click here.

A Very Merry DDF Announcement

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ITVS has announced the eleven documentary projects selected as part of the 2012 Diversity Development Fund. This year’s selections provide extraordinary access and insight into the daily lives and struggles of people around the world, from female parliament members in Afghanistan to the bicycle brigade formed by feminist women of color in East Los Angeles.

The productions were selected through a competitive application process, which resulted in 120 submissions.

Check out the complete list of funded projects after the jump. Continue reading →

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.

Why Poverty? Launches Global Dialogue on Poverty

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ITVS and STEPS International to premiere 8 docs and 30 online shorts in 200 countries to address global inequality.

Why do one billion people still live in poverty worldwide, and what can be done to change it?

That’s the complex question the Why Poverty? series hopes to answer. Presented by ITVS’s Global Perspectives Project in partnership with STEPS International, a Denmark based nonprofit, the Why Poverty? series is a global cross-media project aimed at raising awareness of poverty in America and around the world. Continue reading →

Establishing a Content Strategy for the Future

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By Jim Sommers
Senior Vice President of Content, ITVS

ITVS teams adapt and work together to better serve producers in a dynamic, chaotic media environment.

Five years ago, as the opportunities for creating and distributing content in a multi-platform, cross-media environment were compounding, the funding and rights management environment intensifying, we strategized internally on how to best support independents to thrive in this ever-changing media environment. What it took to fund, distribute, and promote independent film through a simple broadcast model required a shift to connect many more dots to reach audiences digitally. In short, success demanded a multi-pronged approach with more collaboration, flexibility, and partnership across everything we do. We also wanted to provide many points of access to producers seeking funding from ITVS.

Today, we have a service model and culture guided by a Content Strategy Team and several other cross-functional teams to support producers as they absorb new forms of content creation and distribution into their creative processes. The “CST,” also known as the “greenlight” team, finalizes all the programming slates and ensures that ITVS’s content portfolio achieves its mission of diversity and innovation and tracks how our content reaches and engages diverse audiences.

In addition to me, the CST members include: Claire Aguilar, Executive Content Advisor (formerly Vice President of Programming); Lois Vossen, Senior Series Producer of Independent Lens; Matthew Meschery, Director of Digital Content and Innovation; Sreedevi Sripathy, Managing Director of Distribution and Content Management; and Tamara Gould, Vice President of International, who heads up strategic partnerships. Continue reading →

Newly Funded: ITVS is Pleased to Announce Funding for Jed Rothstein’s Heavy Metal Islam

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ITVS recently approved funding for the documentary Heavy Metal Islam by filmmaker Jed Rothstein (Director/Producer).

In 2008, a film crew began documenting a group of young heavy-metal musicians in Egypt. Oppressed by massive social forces beyond their control, the kids — sons of a jailed political dissident and the leader of the only female metal band in the Middle East — saw music as their outlet, their hopes trapped in the traffic-clogged streets of Cairo like a bull in a pen. Then one day, everything burst wide open.

Filmed before, during, and after the beginning of the Egyptian revolution, Heavy Metal Islam tells the stories of a few remarkable young people as they seek the freedom to define themselves and shape their world. Influenced by their participation in major historic events, the young Egyptian musicians experience the political upheaval as personally transformative. With their music as a soundtrack, they share their stories, from their early struggles in Mubarak’s police state, through the fever dream of a revolution, and beyond, into a strange new world where uncertainty is the only constant.

Join ITVS in congratulating the filmmaker!

Let’s Get Monday Night Audiences for Indies: See Viral Plan Below!

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A message from ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer 

Each year, as ITVS embarks on a new season of Independent Lens—the single largest series for independent voices on public or commercial television—we find ourselves along with public television audiences marveling at the powerful storytelling of independent producers.

Independent producers spend years of their lives investing in dramatically different stories but all with the common thread: real voices coming forward that would otherwise go unheard on hard issues that would otherwise be ignored.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

Unlike the commercial world of commission-driven programming, our pipeline pulses with public interest stories that originate with independent filmmakers. Our job—with the help of peer panels of filmmakers and public television programmers—is to create conduits for these stories on the dozens of platforms in the blended media space of broadcast and social networking.

It’s this bottom-up approach that earned six out of the nine PBS 2012 Emmy Awards, and it’s the same approach that has produced perhaps the most exciting Independent Lens lineup to date, ready to go on a new night, Mondays at 10 p.m., with renewed interest and support from stations thanks to your help and support. We are pleased to have kicked off of the IL season—with the two-night special presentation of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women and Girls Worldwide. A pillar program of the ITVS-led Women and Girls Lead public media initiative, Half the Sky has already broken our records on reach—but the real story is about engagement. For those of us working in the public good, media impressions are nice, but what we’re really after is supporting citizens to get involved. Continue reading →

Big Changes to ITVS International!

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ITVS International Call promotes the exchange of compelling documentary films between the United States and other nations, going beyond stereotypes and headline news.

We no longer have a once a year submission deadline but consider projects on a rolling basis. This is a big change!

ITVS International enables independent producers from outside the United States to create documentaries for U.S. television. Through our International Initiative global storytellers introduce U.S. audiences to their world, their neighbors, opening a window into unfamiliar lives, experiences and perspectives.

The International Initiative provides production and/or post-production funds for single non-fiction television documentaries that bring international perspectives, ideas, stories and people to a U.S. audience. This initiative is for non-U.S. producers and filmmakers who live outside the U.S.

Please note: ITVS International Initiative is an all digital submissions process.

Please read our new guidelines; there are important changes that you should note before applying.

For those guidelines, eligibility and how to submit, please visit www.itvs.org/funding/international

PLUS we invite you to join the [ITVS] International Documentary Group on Facebook: share your news, read global doc news, see great clips, get updates on funding, and more, more, more! The best thing is, you set the agenda. We’re listening, and we want to hear about your projects, what you’re excited about, what trends you’re seeing in the global doc community.

Join the group here.

 

 

Diversity Development Fund is Now Accepting Applications

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The new deadline for the Diversity Development Fund is on Friday, September 7th.  Learn how to submit an application here.

The Diversity Development Fund provides up to $15,000 in research and development funding to independent producers of color to develop single documentary programs for public television.  Projects should speak to the ITVS mission to serve underrepresented audiences with programs that take creative risks, explore complex issues, inspire dialogue, and express points of view seldom seen on commercial or public television. Please note that the new deadline is FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7th.

To date, projects selected for the Diversity Development Fund have had national broadcasts on Independent Lens and P.O.V., and have leveraged support from organizations including the National Minority Consortia, the Sundance Doc Fund, Creative Capital Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ford Foundation. Continue reading →

Newly Funded: ITVS is Pleased to Announce Funding for Roger Ross Williams’s God Loves Uganda

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ITVS recently approved funding for the documentary God Loves Uganda  by filmmakers Roger Ross Williams (Director/Producer) and Julie Goldman (Producer).

God Loves Uganda is a journey into the heart of East Africa, where Ugandan pastors and their American counterparts spread God’s word and evangelical values to millions desperate for a better life. Inspired by his own roots in the African American Baptist church, director Roger Ross Williams seeks to explore a place where religion and African culture intersect.

Join ITVS in congratulating the filmmakers!