In a part of America that rarely makes headlines, there is a small town with a group of teenagers who will captivate your ears and warm your heart. Mariachi High presents a year in the life of the champion mariachi ensemble at Zapata High School on the Rio Grande in South Texas.  As they compete and perform with astonishing musical virtuosity, these teens, and the music they make, will inspire, surprise, and bring you to your feet.

Join ITVS is congratulating the filmmakers!

The National Endowment for the Arts has selected two ITVS interactive projects to receive funding through its Arts in Media Grants.

This week, the National Endowment for the Arts announced projects selected for funding through its Arts in Media Grants Program. We’re proud to announce that two interactive projects, funded through ITVS’s Project 360 Initiative, have garnered NEA support.

Power Poetry, inspired by the film To Be Heard by Roland Leigardi-Laura, the world’s first mobile poetry community for youth, encourages youth to write poems and take action through text and micropoems. Our Mother Tongues, inspired by the film We Still Live Here by Anne Makepeace, provides an interactive journey through Native American languages and the burgeoning movement among American Indians to save them.

We’re thrilled that these innovative projects and the talented, independent makers responsible for them will receive additional support from the NEA. We also congratulate many of our colleagues in the field. See the full list of grantees here.

Building Babel  follows a year in the life and work of Sharif El- Gamal, the developer behind New York’s ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ otherwise known as Park51 — a Muslim community center two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. The film covers Sharif’s struggle to build the embattled center against seemingly endless opposition, all while struggling with his own religion and identity amid intense scrutiny.

Building Babel provides a portrait of American identity ten years on from September 11th. Who are Muslims, and who are Americans? Where does the line get drawn, and who gets to draw it?

Watch an interview with David Osit after the jump>

Join ITVS in congratulating the filmmaker!

This year’s selections provide extraordinary access and insight into the daily lives and struggles of people around the world, from military veterans threatened with deportation in the U.S. to women’s human rights struggles in Nigeria.

The productions were selected through a competitive application process, which resulted in 138 submissions.

Check out the complete list of funded projects after the jump >>

American Exile - Carleen Hsu

The Bill - Ramona Diaz

In the Shadow of the Hills - Bao Nguyen

Like a Rolling Stone - Suzanne Joe Kai

My Wave, My Life - Kimberlee Bassford

The Silence of Others - Almudena Carracedo

Siquerios: Walls of Passion - Lorena Manriquez

Reproductive Choice: Revisiting “La Operación” - Sabrina Avilés

Untitled - Gita Saedi Kiely

Warrior Women - Christina D. King

We Respectfully Disagree - Salem Mekuria

For more information on the Diversity Development Fund, please click here.

Marthas is a one-hour documentary that follows the year-long preparations of Mexican American teenagers debuting in the annual Martha Washington Society Ball in Laredo, Texas. The Ball, a unique 112-year-old colonial-themed celebration of George Washington and exclusive to daughters of Society members, is the stage where privilege and legacy are on display, provoking questions about patriotism, tradition, history, identity and the role of women along the border.

Watch an interview with Christina Ibarra (Director/Co-Producer) and Erin Ploss-Campoamor (Co-Producer) after the jump>>

Join ITVS in congratulating the filmmakers!

“I’m perpetually in awe of the work I see on other ITVS-supported programs. To have Indian Relay now associated with that quality of work is an incredible honor.”
-Charles Dye, Director/Producer, Indian Relay

From the bitter-cold of winter on the Rocky Mountain front to the heat and mayhem of the summer’s championship races in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Oregon, Indian Relay follows several teams from three different American Indian communities as they prepare for and compete across a grueling Indian Relay season — all hearts set on the glory and honor of winning this year’s National Championship.

The hope and determination of modern-day American Indian life is revealed in this story about what it takes to win one of the most exciting and dangerous forms of horse racing practiced anywhere in the world today.

Join ITVS is congratulating filmmaker Charles Dye!

The Lost Dream examines the lives of two Iraqis who supported the U.S. mission in their own country and came to America, only to find themselves strangers in a strange land. Nazar and Salam both helped the coalition forces in Operation Iraqi Freedom and were forced to flee their homes. As they begin new lives in the United States, they are left to wonder if their sacrifice was worth the costs.

The Lost Dream reflects a rarely seen Iraqi refugee community in the U.S., a population still paying the price for a war that was supposed to liberate them.

Join ITVS in congratulating the filmmakers and watch an interview with filmmaker Jehan Harney after the jump.

watch

Outside the Box by Lacey Schwartz

Outside the Box follows the life of Lacey Schwartz, a young woman who grew up in an upper-middle-class household with two loving Jewish parents. When she discovers that the man she’s always assumed was her father is not her biological parent, she unlocks a powerful family secret.

What defines our identity, our family of origin, or the family that raises us? How do we come to terms with the sins and mistakes of our parents? Lacey discovers that answering those questions means understanding her parents’ own stories as well as her own.

ITVS announced that it has contracted with eight international documentary projects from its 2011 International Call as part of the Global Perspective Project. This year’s selections provide extraordinary access and insight into the daily lives and struggles of people who live in Uruguay, Iran, China, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Myanmar, and India.

The productions were selected through a competitive application process, which resulted in 476 submissions from 118 countries representing 72 languages.

All eight documentary projects are slated for eventual broadcast, including primetime slots on the Emmy® Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens, P.O.V., and the international series, Global Voices.

Check out the complete list of funded projects after the jump >>

Avant
Producers: Virginia Bogliolo, Pablo Ratto Director: Juan Andres Alvarez
After retiring as a professional dancer, Julio Bocca, one of the most famous ballet dancers on the international scene, accepts the challenge to direct a forgotten national ballet in an unfinished theatre in Uruguay. Avant explores the contrast between Bocca´s quest for excellence and the daily life of this company, set in changing scenery that frames the lives of dancers, workers, cleaners, and technicians.

Before The Revolution
Producer: Barak Heymann  Director: Dan Shadur
Before the Revolution, the untold tale of the Israeli community in Iran prior to the Islamic Revolution in 1979, is a suspense story about courage and hastiness, about greed and blindness, and about great dreams versus an impossible reality. And for one young Israeli family — the director of the film’s family — the last days in Tehran are also a private and hurtful story of a long-gone paradise, never to return.

Democrats
Producer: Henrik Veileborg  Director: Camilla Nielsson
Democrats is a film about the creation of a new constitution in Zimbabwe. The film follows two top politicians who have been appointed to lead the country through the reform process. The two men are political opponents, but united in the ambition to make history by giving the nation a new founding document that could give birth to a future Zimbabwe.

Fallen City
Producer: Lixin Fan Director: Qi Zhao
Fallen City follows the survivors of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake as they embark on a journey in search of hope, meaning, and identity. Zeroing in on three broken families, the film explores the hearts and minds of ordinary rural Chinese forced to restore their lives and the meaning of life in a world without their home and loved ones. A devoted father, a divorced older woman, and a runaway teenage boy — each on their own journey — become a collective image, struggling to find a new position in a new China torn between tradition and modernity.

In The Shadow Of The Sun
Producer: Brian Hill Director: Harry Freeland
Told over the course of four years, In The Shadow Of The Sun tells the intimate story of two very different members of a remote island’s albino community in Tanzania as a wave of brutal ritual killings targeting people with albinism sweeps their country. First there is Vedastus, a warmhearted teenage boy who cares for his terminally ill mother while struggling to find his own place in the world and a way back to school. Then there is Josephat, a strong willed advocate for people with albinism, who fights to unite his country and dreams of scaling the heights of Mount Kilimanjaro. As the killings escalate, Vedastus flees the island in search of safety while Josephat stands and faces the killings head on.

I Want To Cheer Up, Ltd.
Producer: Mette Heide Director: Kaspar Astrup Schröder
The complexity of happiness is at the center of this story about Ryuichi, the owner of a professional stand-in company that rents out fake family members and friends. At work he can finally be the perfect husband and father that he doesn’t know how to be at home.

Miss Nikki & The Tiger Girls
Producer: Jessica Douglas-Henry Director:  Juliet Lamont
The poorest nation in South East Asia, Myanmar has been ruled by a series of military dictatorships for many years. This documentary provides a rare opportunity to go behind the bamboo curtain and explore the lives of ordinary people living in this country through an intimate portrait of Myanmar’s first all-girl band The Tiger Girls.

When Hari Got Married
Producers/Directors: Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam
Hari, a young, but traditional taxi driver in Dharamsala, India, is getting married to a girl he has never met, but with whom he has fallen in love after many mobile phone conversations. Now, frantic preparations are afoot to make sure the wedding goes off without a hitch. Outspoken, opinionated, and funny, Hari grapples with nerves, heartburn, and mounting tension as the day of reckoning draws close.

The 2012 ITVS International Call Deadline is December 9, 2011.  For more information, click here >>

As Goes Janesville follows the lives of dislocated workers, business entrepreneurs and politicians from the Janesville, Wisconsin area to see how they reinvent their lives and the local economy to survive the loss of their century old GM plant in the larger economic downturn.

Watch an interview with Director/Producer Brad Lichtenstein after the jump >>