Words Are the Building Blocks for New Ideas

ITVS and PBS Food are proud to present three videos from Douglas Gayeton’s The Lexicon of Sustainability multiplatform project, which uses photo collage, animation, and hand-written typography to explore terms and ideas behind sustainable agriculture.

The Lexicon of Sustainability is based on a simple premise: people can’t be expected to live more sustainable lives if they don’t even know the most basic terms and principles that define sustainability.

For the past three years Douglas Gayeton and Laura Howard-Gayeton have crisscrossed the USA to learn this new language of sustainability from its foremost practitioners in food and farming.  Alice Waters on edible schoolyards.  Wes Jackson on reinventing wheat farming.  Joel Salatin on embracing the value of saner farming practices.  Vandana Shiva on the global imperative of protecting seeds.  Paul Stamets on how mushrooms can save the world.  Will Allen on Food Security.  Temple Grandin on the humane slaughter of animals.  Farmer John on the revolutionary idea of community-supported agriculture.

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Tags: agriculture, cage free, Douglas Gayeton, free range, ITVS, Laura Howard-Gayeton, lexicon of sustainability, multi-media project, pasture raised, PBS Food, poultry, terms, words

The Social Entrepreneur: Helping Women Not Only to Survive but Thrive

A Women and Girls Lead Spotlight
By Siiri Morley, Founding Partner, Prosperity Candle

Siiri Morley in Lesotho

If someone had told me in college that I would end up getting an MBA and running a business, I would have been offended and said something like “well, you must not understand what I stand for.”

It took me a while to figure out how my diverse interests in anthropology, fair trade, social justice, women’s rights, and international development would come together into what everyone was urging me to get: a “real career”. The fact that these interests would all find a home in business sometimes still surprises me.

As a social entrepreneur running Prosperity Candle, many would still argue that I don’t have a “real career”, but to me, this is the most meaningful and important work that I’ve done.

To better understand how I came to see the potential for business to empower women economically and socially, I should tell you more about my work in the Peace Corps in a small southern African country called Lesotho. › Continue reading

Bhutto Producer Mark Siegel Reflects on Benazir Bhutto

Mark Siegel, co-producer of the documentary Bhutto, discusses his relationship with the former Prime Minister of Pakistan. The film, which aired last season on Independent Lens, earned a Peabody award earlier this month. Siegel and filmmaker Duane Baughman will accept the prestigious award on May 21 in New York.

Tags: Benazir Bhutto, Bhutto, ITVS, mark siegel, Pakistan, PBS, Peabody Awards

PBS Brings ‘Sunshine’ to Online Film Festival

The PBS Online Film Festival features 20 unique short films in various categories. From ‘Girl Power’ to ‘Offbeat’ and everywhere in between, PBS highlights the stories that only public media can tell. 

Watch Sunshine: Single Dads on PBS. See more from PBS Online Film Festival.

Dig deep into your roots and welcome diversity with this week’s ‘Who Are We?’ shorts. ITVS is proud to have Sunshine: Single Dads, a short companion piece to the ITVS documentary Sunshine. In this short, single parenthood becomes even more complicated when the parent is a father and that father is gay. Sunshine: Single Dads tells the male side of one family’s unconventional parenting journey across generations.

PBS will announce the People’s Choice Winner on April 16th, so be sure to vote for your favorite film by clicking on the “like” button after watching the videos.

For a complete listing of short included in the PBS Online Film Festival, please click here.

Tags: PBS online film festival, short films, sunshine, sunshine single dads

An Extra Day To Be Black

On this extra day of February, our friends at the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) talk to visual artist Michael Paul Pritto to discuss his thoughts on Black History Month.

Tags: Black History Month, february, michael paul pritto, National Black Programming Consortium

A Determined Filmmaker Returns to Open Call

Filmmaker Judith Helfand’s latest documentary Cooked was one of a dozen projects accepted into ITVS’s latest round of Open Call funding. She offered BTB this roundup of the producer’s orientation, held last week in San Francisco.

I started writing this amidst the din of the one week orientation for filmmakers funded through ITVS’ most recent Open Call. I’m finishing it from the relative “quiet” of my Upper West Side apartment, save for the garbage trucks way below on 84^th - otherwise known as Edgar Allan Poe Street, the two-year-old running on the bare wood floor above me in 11B, and the hammering from somewhere in my pre- WW1 building.

The “din”: the walla walla of 20 independent producers, each in a different state of disbelief, gratitude, relief, giddy nervousness, tenacious “I can handle anything that comes my way” and “thank you but don’t touch my digital rights”.  It has since turned into a low comforting roar/buzz/oral memory playing in the background as I write up these reflections.
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Tags: chicken and egg, cooked, funding, ITVS, judith hefand, Open Call, PBS

Oakland Rallies Behind The Interrupters

Last week, Community Cinema broke records at the Oakland Museum of California with more than 450 audience members in attendance for The Interrupters.  The documentary, by filmmaker Steve James, will premiere Tuesday February 14 on PBS’ FRONTLINE. Watch a clip from the Community screening in Oakland, below:

In partnership with KQED, The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Youth ALIVE!, the Urban Peace Movement, and a host of other youth organizations represented, the film showed to a standing room only packed house in two theaters.

Youth were at the center of the discussion and made up the majority of the audience.  The panel included Ameena Matthews and Eddie Bocanegra, Violence Interrupters featured in the film.

Tags: ameena matthews, community cinema, Frontline, Oakland, steve james, the interrupters

ITVS on the Ground at Sundance

Greetings from Park City! ITVS has a huge presence at this year’s Sundance Film Festival with six documentaries screening in competition. This year, BTB is on the ground at the festival and will have frequent video updates from the filmmakers sledding around town. Keep an eye on the blog and follow us on twitter under #ITVSsundance for immediate updates. For now, you can find a rundown of ITVS film screenings below. More to come!

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POV Extends Stream of Where Soldiers Come From

The ITVS-funded documentary by filmmaker Heather Courtney will stream free on POV until December 18.

Where Soldiers Come From

A four-year journey that takes teenagers from rural northern Michigan to the battlefields of Afghanistan and back, Where Soldiers Come From follows five high school friends who join the National Guard to pay for college. The film is an intimate look at the young men who fight America’s wars. Check out the film’s trailer after the jump.
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Tags: ITVS, P.O.V., where soldiers come from

International Call Profile: Ritu Sarin & Tenzin Sonam

The ITVS International Call deadline is quickly approaching on December 9, 2011. Until then, BTB will be profiling several international filmmakers who have received ITVS support. This week, we get to know filmmakers Ritu Sarin and Tenzin Sonam, who received funding for their documentary When Hari Got Married. The filmmakers joined us via Skype (forgive the quality) from India.

International Call seeks compelling documentaries from international producers in key target regions, including the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that will feed the content pipeline for ITVS’s newly launched Women and Girls Lead, a multiyear engagement campaign focusing the power of independent documentary storytelling on the leadership and development of women and girls.
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Tags: international call, itvs funding, ritu sarin, tenzin sonam, when hari go married