LA Film Festival and ITVS Presents: Brothers Hypnotic

Posted on June 13, 2013 by ITVS Staff

The 2013 Los Angeles Film Festival, June 13-23 at L.A. LIVE, will screen a diverse slate of nearly 200 feature films, shorts, music videos, and documentaries from around the world. Don’t miss 10 days and 11 nights of red carpet premieres, conversations, live music, free outdoor screenings, and films from around the world.

Filmmaker Reuben Atlas’ upcoming Independent Lens documentary, Brothers Hypnotic, will screen on Sunday, June 16^th and Wednesday, June 19^th as part of the Los Angeles Film Festival, co-presented by ITVS.

Some of the most energetic, riveting, and symphonic sounds in jazz today emanate from the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. The band, consisting of eight brothers–all sons of jazz legend Phil Cohran–who were raised on Chicago’s South Side and have been practicing as a family since they were kids.

Whether playing on the streets of New York City or performing alongside Prince, when the brothers raise their horns, they create a music that looms large in the imagination. As the brothers come of age on the world’s stage, brotherhood becomes more than just a biological fact. It becomes an ideal, even when it clashes with their future dreams. Continue reading →

ITVS Partners with Geena Davis to Confront the Effects of Media on Children

Posted on April 19, 2013 by ITVS Staff

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and ITVS have partnered together to produce an educational program, which includes five short videos produced for kids titled Guess Who?, to be featured by the Women and Girls Lead campaign.

Watch Guess Who?: The Mayor and The Judge on PBS. See more from Independent Lens.

It is time to take a hard look at the message contemporary media is sending to children and young adults. Guess Who? teaches children ages 6 to 9 to challenge gender stereotypes through the use of video and educational curriculum.

“Media images are a powerful force in shaping our perceptions of men and women. The stark gender inequality in media aimed at little children is significant, as television and movies wield enormous influence on them as they develop a sense of their role in the world. And because young kids tend to watch the same TV shows and movies repeatedly, negative stereotypes get imprinted again and again,” said Geena Davis, Academy® Award-winning actor and founder of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

Student producers at the University of Southern California, Boston University, Columbia College, Lipscomb University, and Webster University worked with the Institute to create the shorts, which will air on public television stations nationwide and are also featured online by PBS’ Emmy Award Winning series, Independent Lens.

On April 19th, Davis will be giving the keynote address to open the 7th annual West Hollywood’s Women’s Leadership Conference: Unlimited Opportunities – Knowledge. Power. Community. The conference includes a special screening of the Oscar nominated film, The Invisible War, which will be preceded by the Guess Who? short, “The Soldier,” produced by USC. The event includes a panel discussion led by PBS SoCal’s Maria Hall Brown and features filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, along with subject Alison Gil.

Kind Hearted Woman Premieres Tonight on PBS

Posted on April 1, 2013 by ITVS Staff

Kind Hearted Woman, a special co-presentation from Independent Lens and FRONTLINE, will premiere Monday, April 1st on PBS. The two-part documentary is a Women and Girls Lead pillar program.

In this two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation. Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child.

Join the Online Social Screening April 17 at 11am PT / 2pm ET

Watch a 90-minute version of Kind Hearted Woman with a live audience during our online social screening Wednesday, April 17th at 11am PT / 2pm ET. Chat with advocates, survivors, and supporters to find ways to get involved in ending the crisis of violence against women and children. Join the screening at bit.ly/KindHearted.

Continue reading →

Half the Sky Earns TV Academy Honors

Posted on March 21, 2013 by ITVS Staff

The Independent Lens special presentation Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide will be among seven other programs to receive Television Academy Honors at the May 9^th ceremony in Los Angeles.

Recognized for personifying “Television with a Conscience,” the landmark PBS program is based on the book by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The four-part series follows six actress-advocates as they travel to six countries and meet inspiring, courageous individuals who are confronting oppression and developing real, meaningful solutions through health care, education, and economic empowerment for women and girls.

The film premiered last October as part of public media’s Women and Girls Lead initiative. Watch the trailer for the doc after the jump. Continue reading →

#SheDocs in Numbers: A Look at Women in Media

Posted on March 20, 2013 by ITVS Staff

Each year, the Center for the Study of Women in TV & Film releases its research on the status of women and girls behind the scenes and on screen in mainstream media. The 2012 results revealed that 33 percent of characters in Hollywood films were female, while only 11 percent of them were the film’s protagonists. What is more astonishing is that the number of female protagonists on screen decreased from 16 percent in 2002. So what do we do when the media industry represents 50 percent of the population only 33 percent of the time? We host the #SheDocs Online Film Festival!

#SheDocs is streaming 10 free films about real women and girls online from March 1-31st during Women’s History Month. Nearly 10,000 people have already logged on to watch our all-star lineup of female protagonists taking the lead in their own lives.

shedocs_meme_stats_05A copy Here is what our viewers will find:

10 free films

50 female characters

18 female protagonists

12 women filmmakers (and 4 male filmmakers who represent women well!)

11 countries/nations

8 languages (including one that hasn’t been spoken in 6 generations)

12 days left to watch

We’ve been so inspired by the #SheDocs fanfare that we’re thinking of making it a 24/7, 365 day-a-year destination to find free films about women and girls temporarily available to watch online. Until then, don’t miss the Women’s History Month films online until Sunday, March 31st at http://bit.ly/SheDocs.

ITVS Co-Presents Two Films at CAAMFest!

Posted on March 15, 2013 by ITVS Staff

For the next 10 days, the Center for Asian America Media presents CAAMFest, a celebration of film, music, food and digital media form the world’s most innovative Asian and Asian American artists.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 2013 CAAMFest, formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, and ITVS could not be more excited to co-present two of the films featured in this year’s festival, The Mosuo Sisters and Xmas Without China.

This year, in an effort to transition away from the traditional film festival, CAAM has embraced new forms of artistic expression with a spirit of curiosity and adventure. Come celebrate the festival through various live events, multimedia performances, and expanded ventures into the music and culinary worlds. With such a wide variety of entertainment to choose from, Bay Area participants will be able to enjoy Asian American media in all its various forms.

Be sure to check out the trailers (after the jump)! Continue reading →

Adrian Baker on Animating Native American Oral History

Posted on March 13, 2013 by ITVS Staff

By Rebecca Huval
Originally posted on the Independent Lens Blog

Sometimes, the shameful chapters of our past deserve to be excavated through an animated short, the form du jour for oral history projects such as StoryCorps. From the PBS Online Film Festival, the short documentary Injunuity: Buried features the story of a Native American burial ground and shellmound recently built over by a Bay Area mall.

Adrian Baker, director of Injunuity, one of 25 short videos in the PBS 2013 Online Film Festival

Buried will be available on the PBS Online Film Festival webpage and the rest of the shorts will soon be available on the Injunuity website. The series captures field recordings of Native Americans who dissect issues such as Native American language preservation and education, remixed as three-minute animations in a variety of styles. The 25 films in the overall festival will be available between March 4 to 22.

Director Adrian Baker shared with us the inspiration for his cinematic collages and animations that capture modern-day Native American issues, as well as the stories of our shared past.

1. Why did you structure these stories in three-minute shorts?

There are so many issues to talk about and discuss, so many problems that need our attention. So rather than setting out to solve all of these issues or come to hard and fast conclusions, instead, I wanted to create starting points for discussions more than anything else. In three minutes you can create that foundation that’s necessary to begin meaningful dialog, but where it goes from there is up to the viewer, or the teacher who watches it with their classroom, or the parent who watches it with their child.

I also wanted to create pieces that fit into today’s quick twitch lifestyle where more media is being consumed in shorter amounts of time. The fixed running time model that we have for television is being replaced by the free form of the web, where time length isn’t dictated by commercial concerns or by what comes on before or after. And really, all you have to do is take a look at anyone’s Facebook feed to see that there are more and more shorter pieces of content being passed around and shared. Today’s viewer is on the go, watching a smart phone for ten minutes on BART [the Bay Area's commuter rail service]. So there is a growing market for shorter content. But what may be the best thing about the three-minute short is that, even if the viewer doesn’t like it that much, no matter where you are in the piece, even if it’s just beginning, it’s almost over. Continue reading →

Happy International Women’s Day from Women and Girls Lead

Posted on March 8, 2013 by ITVS Staff

Today is International Women’s Day! How do you plan to honor the more than 3 billion women and girls in the world in the next 24 hours? We like to celebrate with film, of course. No other medium can amplify women’s voices and capture their experiences quite like documentary film. Join us today at 11am PT / 2pm ET for a special International Women’s Day online screening of clips from Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.

Fans of the Half the Sky Movement will gather online today to talk about the ways that they are making a difference in the lives of women and girls everywhere. We’ll also share lots of new opportunities to get involved, such as a new Facebook game! Half the Sky Movement: The Game is a Facebook adventure that raises awareness and funds to empower women and girls across the globe. Inspired by the worldwide movement, the game was created by Pulitzer-Prize winning authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and the PBS documentary film series. Players can embark on a journey to complete quests and unlock real-life donations from sponsors that reflect many important issues.

We’ll also talk more about the inspiring young female changemakers currently being considered for the Students Rebuild Award. The award, sponsored by the Besos Family Foundation, will give five $10,000 prizes to young women working for change in Half the Sky featured countries. Through the end of the day, anyone can view and vote for these remarkable award finalists, who hail from Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Somaliland, India, and Kenya. Award winners will be announced online during the week of March 18th.

Be sure to continue the celebration all month long by watching the ten powerful documentaries included in the #SheDocs Online Film Festival. Happy International Women’s Day from Women and Girls Lead!

Women and Girls Star in the SheDocs Online Film Festival

Posted on March 7, 2013 by ITVS Staff

If the Oscars were any indication, we know Hollywood is lagging behind on representing women and girls in all their diversity on the big screen. In fact only 11 percent of protagonists in Hollywood films are female, according to a 2011 report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film. Women and Girls Lead has turned to the little screen to offer a refreshing selection of films starring women and girls as leaders in their own lives. The #SheDocs Online Film Festival will run from March 1-31 and feature 10 documentary films to watch online all month long in celebration of Women’s History Month. We promise you’ll be inspired by these protagonists! Start watching at today!

Catch up on all the #SheDocs related conversations after the jump! Continue reading →