Part travel blog, part photo essay, part video diary, and part mobile application, 30 Mosques in 30 States is an original documentary experience developed by digital media producers Aman Ali and Bassam Tariq – two young Muslim Americans who set out to visit a different mosque in a different U.S. state for each of the 30 days of Ramadan. The two’s 13,000-mile route will essentially take them across the entire country before they end up back home in New York City. Through their journey, we learn about the first mosque built in the U.S. in the tiny town of Ross, North Dakota in 1929 as well as what life is like for Muslim Americans in Alaska.

There are an estimated 3 million to 4 million Muslims living in the United States – a number that is expected to double by the year 2030. Muslims in the U.S. come from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds including African Americans, South and East Asians, Europeans, Arabs, and East Africans. 30 Mosques in 30 States is a glimpse into the mosaic of Muslim life that can only be told with today’s new forms of digital storytelling. Join Aman and Bassam on their journey, here: http://30mosques.com/

30 Mosques in 30 States has already been generating a lot of buzz.  Check out these features from CNN, The Huffington Post, Boing Boing, and The Takeaway.

30 Mosques in 30 States is part of Diverse Muslim Voices, a multiyear media initiative to build awareness and improve understanding in the U.S. of diverse Muslim societies. Funding is provided by the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art.

The ITVS-funded Garbage Dreams Game was recognized at this year’s eight annual Games for Change Festival in New York City. Matthew Meschery heads up ITVS’ digital initiatives and participated in one of the festival’s panel, entitled “Public Media and Games.”

So, what does public media have to do with games? Well, with the exception of PBS Kids, there are few examples to date of games being produced within public media. However, that may be about to change. During our panel, representatives from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities announced changes to their classification guidelines to accept proposals for games. I was happy to report that at ITVS we are currently funding several gaming projects that are companion elements to ITVS-funded documentary films. Although these represent small steps, perhaps this is the beginning of a move within public media to embrace games for general audiences, beyond the excellent content that PBS develops for children.

This interest in games should come as no surprise given that, right now, they are the fastest growing form of media, with a majority of adults playing games, and one in five playing on a daily basis. U.S. households have approximately 64 million game consoles. If public media wants to remain relevant in the 21st century and create strategies for meaningful, next-generation content, games at least need to be in the conversation.

For children, PBS Kids has delivered research-driven game content online for years, and has demonstrated both their popularity as well as the educational benefit in and out of the classroom. In terms of developing games for adults and a general audience, there is no research to demonstrate the impact. However, Al Gore, this year’s festival keynote speaker, said it best with this remark:

“We already know the immense power of popular media to illuminate issues that can seem intractable and overly-complex, but [through games] can be illuminated and presented to general audiences in a way that invites people to become involved in trying to solve the problems that our society has to solve.”

ITVS is fortunate have supported games since 2006 when we funded independent game producers to develop several projects, including World Without Oil, a project produced by Jane McGonical and Ken Eklund that is often sited as a seminal alternative-reality game on an important social issue — our dependence on fossil fuels. World Without Oil demonstrated to us how a game could impel people from all over the world to not just passively watch a piece of media, but to participate in its creation and interact with each other to solve problems in the form of an oil-crisis simulation.

Since I knew that many in the audience had heard of World Without Oil, I asked them during my panel how many knew it was funded by a public-media entity (ITVS and CPB), and only a fraction raised their hand. It is my hope that this will change in the future. That not only will public-media organizations begin to support the creation of games but will also be able to do so in a way that highlights their support. One way of doing that for ITVS is to fund indie filmmakers when they have ideas for excellent game companion pieces to their projects.

In the 21st century, audiences are used to exploring and interacting with media across platforms. Now is the time for public media to build strategies to account for this change and that strategy won’t be complete without games.

You can view the archived videos from the Games for Change Festival here.

FOCUS ON is a regular interview series profiling independent filmmakers and their projects. Up this week is Mark Thiedeman, who has directed many short films and one feature film, The Scoundrel. His new feature, Last Summer, is currently in development and is scheduled to shoot in Arkansas in August.

A scene from "Last Summer," Mark Thiedeman's upcoming feature film

What is the least amount of money you’ve spent on a narrative feature, and how did you manage that?

I shot a no-budget feature in New York a few years ago called The Scoundrel. It cost about $3,000, which was essentially the cost of food, transportation, and half a dozen props. I had an amazing cinematographer, David Goodman, who worked for free, and had some nice looking locations, which were also free. Lucky for us, there are certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn with beautiful restaurants, apartments, and bars that seem to have come from a different era. No art direction required. Why pay for set decoration when you don’t have to?

What is a recurring challenge you face on every shoot as a result of having such a low budget?

For me, the simplicity of a shoot is directly proportional to the amount of money involved. I can’t afford to have a ton of people on set, a ton of equipment, etc., but I also don’t want those things. It’s my experience that as more money and more people become involved, the more difficult, chaotic, and challenging it becomes. I work with a simple crew, and we work together as a small family to make the film. That said, if there’s any downside to low-budget filmmaking, I’d say it’s the amount of time it takes to finish a film. When you’re doing everything yourself (because great editors and great sound designers cost a lot of money), it takes time. When one person is doing the job of 200 people, it takes a lot of time.

How do you think the low cost of digital filmmaking has helped (or harmed) the craft of filmmaking?

You’re seeing narratives shot without scripts or storyboards, directors figuring out the movie as they go. I doubt many American producers would allow that to happen if the film were shot on 35mm. We’re seeing film move towards becoming more of a visual medium than a storytelling medium, which I love. This is precisely because of the low cost of digital technology and its versatility. We have outstanding filmmakers like Pedro Costa working with mini-DV tapes, lighting with windows and foil paper, and his films are major works of art. Would anyone fund a movie like Colossal Youth (shaped from 320 hours of digital footage and shot without a single light) if 35mm were still the standard? I don’t think so. If you ask me if digital filmmaking has had a negative impact on filmmakers, I’d say it hasn’t. Not at all.

What has your experience with crowdsourcing been? Do you think an “etiquette” needs to be established as far as giving friends money for their projects and expecting them to contribute to your projects?

I’m not sure that any particular etiquette is required. I’ve contributed to a handful of projects over the past month or so because I believe in the films and people involved in the projects, not because I want those people to give me money.  My new feature, Last Summer, is currently seeking some additional financing on IndieGoGo, and we’ve received donations from complete strangers. That isn’t because I have a billion friends. It’s because someone read about the project, told a friend, who told a friend, and people are interested.

You are a filmmaker formerly based in NYC, and currently based in Little Rock, Arkansas. What do you wish the independent film worlds of NYC and Los Angeles knew/understood about rural filmmaking communities?

We don’t have a large film industry here, but you’ll see more films coming out of Southern states in the next few years. I was surprised when I attended the Little Rock Film Festival this year to find that the shorts in the “Made in Arkansas” program were, in many cases, much stronger than the shorts coming out of cities like New York and Los Angeles. The talent was incredible, and that’s because these filmmakers are making movies because they love doing it — not just to be a part of the “industry.”  Since there isn’t an established film industry here, there are fewer rules, so filmmakers have a chance to express themselves more freely.

What advice do you have for an emerging filmmaker who has no money?

Great movies aren’t great because of money; they’re great because of content. The people and places you choose to film will be the heart of your movie. Cast wisely, choose locations wisely, and learn as much as you can about the equipment you have. When you’re working with no budget, “production value” is 10-percent money and 90-percent talent. So, practice, practice, practice. Keep making short projects, learn your own rhythms, find your style.

How has the South community welcomed you as an artist, as opposed to NYC where artists are everywhere?

It’s true, when you live in a city of artists, it’s easy to get cynical when you hear people introduce themselves as filmmakers. It’s easy to think, “yeah, who isn’t a filmmaker?” Being in the South is different. I made A Christian Boy and assumed people in Arkansas might not like it, because it’s what some folks would call “artsy” and it deals with both religion and homosexuality (two hot topics down here!). But when we screened it at the Little Rock Film Festival, I had people coming up to me and saying, “Thank you so much for moving here. We need people like you.” They want Southern people to have a voice, a presence in the film world. Also, I think most people will agree that it’s important to give a voice to the experience of being gay in the South. I want to tell stories about real Southerners — more than that, real Americans — not the kind you typically see in movies.

What’s next for you?

In August I’ll shoot my next feature Last Summer. It’s a love story about two high school sweethearts, Luke and Jonah, who live in a rural Southern town. This is the story of their final summer together. As Jonah prepares to leave home for bigger and better things, Luke is faced with an uncertain future and the growing pressures of adulthood. The idea of the film is to present a world of baseball fields and apple pie and church on Sundays and the fourth of July in which a love story between two boys fits right in.

This BTB interview was conducted and condensed by Melody Morgan.

Director Vilmos Zsigmond

Iconic cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond — DP on such classics as The Deer Hunter, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind — sat down with Independent Lens to answer a few of the questions the audience posed to him earlier this season.

Find out who his favorite directors and fellow cinematographers are, what’s wrong with American film schools, and what exactly constitutes the “American New Wave” he and his best friend Laszlo Kovacs are sometimes credited with ushering in during the 1960s and 1970s.

Read the full interview here>>

Wendy Levy, director of the BAVC Producers Institute

Filmmakers, do you know your alternate reality from your augmented reality? If not, you may want to get a glimpse into the future of documentary film by checking out what’s going on at The Bay Area Video Coalition’s Producers Institute for New Media Technologies.

The Producers Institute is a 10-day residency for independent producers who, in collaboration with teams of strategists, technologists, and NGO partners, develop and prototype multi-platform projects related to their documentary projects. Now in its fourth year, the Producers Institute has gained recognition as an incubator for cutting-edge content and thought leadership in public and social interest media. That’s why we’re especially excited that four producers are participating this year with projects related to their ITVS-funded films: Pamela Yates, Granito (Open Call, 2009); Roland Leguiri-Laura, To Be Heard (Open Call, 2008); Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen, The Revolutionary Optimists (Open Call, 2009); and Jehan Harney, Dream of America (Diversity Development Fund, 2008).

This year, ITVS staffers were lucky enough to attend some of the events and activities, including the day of final presentations. By then, producers’ eyes were bleary from a full week of non-stop brainstorming, whiteboarding, designing, wire-framing, and developing their prototypes. Despite the frenetic schedule, the producers presented some impressive work that ranged from the aforementioned alternate reality and augmented reality game prototypes, to geo-targeted mapping projects, to mobile social applications, and much more. Videos of the final presentations should be posted soon, but to learn about the specific project proposals, you can click here. To get a re-cap of the week from the archived Twitter feed and to see more pics, click here.

If you’re not quite sure how these new technologies are integrated into a documentary film project, one example is BAVC Producers Institute alumni and ITVS-funded producers’ The Returning Home Project , an interactive media and story-sharing site created by Gita Pullapilly and Aron Gaudet producers of The Way We Get By.

Wendy Levy, director of the Institute, has continued to grow the program in dynamic ways that recognize the needs of mediamakers to further develop and sustain their projects. This year, representatives from NGO organizations were added to the teams to provide an added perspective of community engagement and potential partnership. As consumers multitask on multiple screens, there are multiple opportunities to interact and engage with them; but there are also more distractions and more competition for their attention than ever.

That’s why the Institute’s strategy sounds like a recipe for success: combining — in one room, for one intense week — great social-interest storytellers, NGO organizations with deep links to communities, and technologists who understand the new tools to reach and engage with those communities. Or maybe it sounds like the plot for a great new reality show – augmented or otherwise.

— Matthew Meschery, Director of Digital Initiatives at ITVS

Check out the PBS Indies page on iTunes where you’ll find more than 20 indie films from Independent Lens, Global Voices and other public television series and broadcasts.

Each film is now available for rent for $2.99 or for purchase at $9.99.

A selection of films include: ADJUST YOUR COLOR: The Truth of Petey Green, THE ATOM SMASHERS, BANISHED, the Oscar-nominated DAUGHTER FROM DANANG, A DREAM IN DOUBT, LAKSHMI AND ME, THE LOSS OF NAMELESS THINGS, MAPPING STEM CELL RESEARCH: TERRA INCOGNITA, MARCH POINT, MILKING THE RHINO, OPERATION FILMMAKER, POWER TRIP, RED WHITE BLACK & BLUE, A SON’S SACRIFICE, STRANDED: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors and ESTILO HIP HOP.

Visit iTunes >>

Some of the groundbreaking films from Independent Lens now available on iTunes include: ADJUST YOUR COLOR: The Truth of Petey Green, THE ATOM SMASHERS, BANISHED, the Oscar-nominated DAUGHTER FROM DANANG, A DREAM IN DOUBT, LAKSHMI AND ME, THE LOSS OF NAMELESS THINGS, MAPPING STEM CELL RESEARCH: TERRA INCOGNITA, MARCH POINT, MILKING THE RHINO, OPERATION FILMMAKER, POWER TRIP, RED WHITE BLACK & BLUE, A SON’S SACRIFICE, STRANDED: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors and ESTILO HIP HOP, which premiered on the PBS WORLD series Global Voices. Each film is available for purchase at $9.99.

This initiative is part of the Independent Digital Distribution Lab, a project to expand distribution to broadband-connected audiences while exploring revenue-generating partnership models for independent filmmakers and public television.

“By offering content on iTunes, we are helping producers who want to experiment with online content gain access to PBS’s digital distribution outlets,” said Sally Jo Fifer, president and CEO of ITVS.

Visit the iTunes store >>

The Producers Institute for New Media Technologies, hosted by the Bay Area Video Coalition (BAVC), is a ten-day residency for eight creative teams (independent producers or public broadcasters) with a shared goal of developing and prototyping a multi-platform project inspired by or based on a significant documentary project.

Filmmakers who participate in the institute will develop socially relevant media projects for emerging digital platforms and have opportunities to participate in high-level industry roundtables, intense one-on-one project development with technical mentors, new media storytelling workshops and hands-on prototyping of their ideas.

Participants will adapt and develop film, video and audio content for delivery using a range of interactive formats, including video game applications, interactive web-based experiences, mobile streaming, multi-user communities and new educational software. Propose a range of delivery strategies, including cellphones, other hand-held devices, set-tops, Internet, portable software and more.

Check out the Second Life video below to get an overview of the Institute from Wendy Levy, director of creative programming at BAVC:

The Institute provides creative mentors, technology consultants and advisors based on the needs of your project. At the end of the residency, all participants demonstrate and pitch to a panel of VC funders, industry leaders and foundations. As ongoing support after the Institute, BAVC hosts a web-based resource center for the continued sharing of new ideas, strategies, project development and distribution opportunities.

The deadline to apply is January 15, 2010.

Download an application now >>

Over the last three years, ITVS has had six films participate in the Institute, including THE WAITING ROOM, WHAT WE GOT, THE WAY WE GET BY, IN THE MATTER OF CHA JUNG HEE, DEEP DOWN and PAPERBACK DREAMS.

Check out some of these projects and more on the BAVC Web site >>

The screenings brought awareness about the importance of organ donation in the United States. But what is the organ market like in other countries?

This month, check out the ITVS International film IRANIAN KIDNEY BARGAIN SALE, which follows young Iranians through the organ trade process, in the only country in the world where kidney trading is legal.

Download IRANIAN KIDNEY BARGAIN SALE on iTunes >>