digital
Watch IRANIAN KIDNEY BARGAIN SALE on iTunes
Last month, Community Cinema screened D TOUR, which chronicles musician Pat Spurgeon’s search for a living kidney donor and the challenges associated with finding a viable match.
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.
Live Streaming Webcast: Media as a Global Diplomat II: New Findings on the Science of Media and Conflict
Last February, ITVS co-hosted a media leadership summit with the U.S. Institute of Peace at the Newseum in Washington, DC. A constellation of luminaries from the field, capped by distinguished veteran journalist and moderator Ted Koppel, developed recommendations to the new administration about the role of media in public diplomacy.
Continuing the dialogue, Media as a Global Diplomat II: New Findings on the Science of Media and Conflict took place today, October 1 from 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM EDT at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
This summit included a keynote by her majesty Queen Noor of Jordan. ITVS Vice President of Distribution Tamara Gould moderated a discussion about the responsibility of filmmakers and storytellers to create media that serves the public interest.
Other panelists included: Michael Medavoy, Hollywood studio executive (Apocalypse Now, Raging Bull) and author of American Idol After Iraq: Winning Hearts and Minds in the Global Media Age; Riz Khan, senior news anchor, Al Jazeera English; Arik Bernstein, founder of Alma Films and creator of Gaza-Sderot – Life in spite of everything; and Lucas Welch, president and founder of Soliya.
Learn more by visiting the United States Institute of Peace Web site >>
Watch ITVS Films for Free on Hulu
Do you love indie films but not sure where to find them online? ITVS now has numerous films available on Hulu for free from the PBS series Independent Lens and the PBS WORLD series Global Voices.
Among the programs available is the deeply moving Independent Lens film A DREAM IN DOUBT, which looks at one of America’s first post-9/11 hate crime murders and the growing wave of violence in retaliation for the terror attacks.
Check out A DREAM IN DOUBT on Hulu >>
Watch ITVS Films for Free on Hulu
It’s summertime, and for TV viewers everywhere that means the dreaded season of reruns and reality TV. But wait, we have a solution. ITVS currently offers 17 full-length programs available for free on Hulu.
Among the programs available is the highly entertaining film SHAOLIN ULYSSES: Kungfu Monks in America, which follows five Zen Buddhist monks who set out to make new lives teaching their craft in unlikely parts of America.
Check out SHAOLIN ULYSSES and other ITVS programs on Hulu >>
Independent Lens Films Available Now on Netflix
Do you subscribe to Netflix? If so, be sure to add these latest Independent Lens titles to your queue.
ADJUST YOUR COLOR: The Truth of Petey Greene
**Winner of the 2009 Indie Lens Audience Award
He was a former drug addict and felon. He was also America’s first “shock jock.” Petey Greene gave voice to the unheard––speaking truth to power on his raw and uncensored TV and radio programs. His explosive language and brash style shocked the world as he battled both the system and his own demons on a journey to becoming a leading activist during some of the most tumultuous years in recent history.
THE ATOM SMASHERS
In a premier U.S. government laboratory, physicists race to discover one of the biggest secrets in the universe before a far more powerful European accelerator upstages both them and the entire U.S. science program. But, with a growing national deficit made worse by military conflicts and natural disasters, the lab struggles to survive. Will the discovery happen before the funds run out? Or will America watch the greatest minds in physics drift across the Atlantic, closing a great chapter in American science?
PAUL CONRAD: Drawing Fire
Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad has drawn and quartered 11 presidents in a remarkable career spanning half a century. Narrated by Tom Brokaw, PAUL CONRAD: Drawing Fire pays tribute to a legendary journalist and artist who epitomizes the fiercely independent voice that has been vanishing from American news media in recent years.
Netflix subscribers can either rent these titles on DVD or stream the films directly in the browser. Also, Xbox subscribers can watch Netflix movies through the 360 console.
ITVS International Films now on iTunes
IRANIAN KIDNEY BARGAIN SALE, the first of many ITVS International films launching on iTunes.
Do you enjoy downloading your favorite films online? Check out IRANIAN KIDNEY BARGAIN SALE, the first of many ITVS International shows launching on the iTunes Movie Store, where documentary film fans can now rent or buy the movie at their convenience.
Against the backdrop of an official kidney referral agency, IRANIAN KIDNEY BARGAIN SALE follows young Iranians through the organ trade process: from their first encounter to surgery and kidney removal.
Global Voices Channel on Hulu
ITVS and PBS partner Hulu recently launched the Global Voices Channel, featuring 18 full-length episodes from the first season.
Global Voices offers an international perspective through intimate and uncommon stories by and about everyday people, made by independent filmmakers from around the globe. A great success in the online video world, Hulu remains the second most visited site for online video viewing in the U.S. and its user interface streams ITVS content directly in the browser.
Public Launch of the Independent Digital Distribution Lab
In honor of our new “Independent Digital Distribution Lab,” which we’re publicly launching this week, here are three reasons the Internet is GREAT for filmmakers:
1. Distribution: easy and cheap!
2. Niche markets and social networks at your fingertips!
3. Kiss the middlemen goodbye!
And here are three reasons the Internet is TERRIBLE for filmmakers:
1. Hello, free. Goodbye, revenue.
2. 90 minutes? How about three?
3. If a film streams on the Internet and no one ever finds it, is it really streaming?
It’s a lot more complicated than that, of course, but these are sample horns of the digital dilemma facing documentary filmmakers and all of us in public media. And the simple fact is that nobody knows how the business and audience models are ultimately going to shake out online, which makes the universe complicated for filmmakers, broadcasters and traditional home video and educational distributors.
We do know public media needs to find new ways to bring its mission online. No commercial entity is going to do that for us, not in the long run certainly, not through thick and thin. We know that independents need income and exposure. And we know that both independents and public media want to reach and serve the public; this shared goal is the basis of their long-standing partnership.
ITVS was founded to support independent producers’ access to public broadcasting and to ensure that Americans would hear and see stories about those most underrepresented. Our mandate was to create a service that in part provides funding in exchange for domestic public television licensing. When the world was only about television broadcast, that left producers free to distribute their programs beyond broadcast to earn revenue.
Today, as definitions shift and broadcast merges with digital, PBS, like all broadcasters, is considering what it must do to serve American audiences and reach more people in more ways. For ITVS, it is a balancing act to manage the GREAT and the TERRIBLE with our two partners. We must help independent producers and public broadcasting gain a foothold with new digital and participatory audiences, while ensuring that producers garner the revenue they need to keep working.
We know that independents and PBS must succeed together, and we’ve been working for several years to find ways to navigate the digital terrain to represent the public media mission, generate indie income, collaborate with traditional distributors, gain exposure, reach audiences, connect communities and serve the democratic commons—all at the same time.
Over the last three years, that work has included a survey of 430 producers on how they use the Internet; eight commissioned case studies on indies’ digital activities; two co-published reports with the Center for Social Media on the new digital marketplace; a series of national meetings on digital rights in conjunction with the Paley Center; experimental partnerships with Jaman, SnagFilms and iThentic; and ongoing meetings with PBS Digital leadership. Now we’re teaming up with PBS on the Independent Digital Distribution Lab to build some working models for the PBS-Independent partnership online.
For producers, that may mean exploring new kinds of content. Long-form content is still finding audiences online, but users increasingly view in segments on a wide variety of different devices. Others expect alternative versions: the full, the half, the short, the micro, the pre-, the post-, the making of. Funders are still supporting underrepresented voices, but there are new options competing with the 90-minute, $500k documentary. That’s why part of the new lab is providing ITVS-funded producers with additional support and partnerships to help independents experiment with audience development strategies.
The other part of the Independent Digital Distribution Lab is focused on helping producers who want to experiment with online audiences gain access to PBS’s partnerships with commercial digital platforms. How do we carve out a place for public media on the Internet? How do we bring in much needed revenue for independents trying to pay the rent and fund their next projects? How can we balance these new opportunities with those presented by traditional home video and educational distributors, and how can these best work in tandem? How can we best position ourselves for the right revenue and audience models when this transitional phase—with its still limited audiences and even more limited profits—matures? These are challenges we will only have the opportunity to meet by getting in the game.
Independents have a vision, an authenticity, an innovative spirit and a commitment to unique stories in service to the public. In a world where non-fiction as a genre is on the rise, independents increasingly are the ones who carry the banner of significance—the stuff that seeks more complicated truths and finds new ways to help us see the world anew. These qualities, and the hard-won craft of telling stories, will serve independents well in these exciting, discouraging, chaotic, utopian, terrible and great times. Nobody knows how this will all exactly shake out, but ITVS will continue to find opportunities for independents to tell their stories to the public—that is a given.
Sally Jo Fifer
President and CEO
ITVS Commissioned Author Pens on the Changing Media Marketplace
One year ago, ITVS commissioned author Scott Kirsner to find out what independent filmmakers are doing in the field. ITVS has since published his eight case studies on the ITVS website––which highlight how independents are experimenting with new technologies and hopefully serves as inspiration to other filmmakers.
Kirsner has since published Fans, Friends & Followers, a comprehensive book that addresses how creative people can build audiences online and also create sustainable business models. In an email interview, Kirsner explained how the ITVS case studies sparked the idea for his book. “It started to occur to me that [the filmmakers] were living in a noisier marketplace than ever before, with more competition from other films on the festival circuit, online, in theatrical release and on DVD and television,” he said. “Some of the key challenges that seemed everyone was still grappling with was how do you cultivate an audience for the film you’ve made, how do you get that audience to support you in some way and how to you sort of carry that audience from one film to the next?”
As Kirsner thought more about how to address the challenge of cultivating an audience for a film, he branched out into other industries. “The more I started to think about that issue, the more I also wanted to talk to musicians and artists and writers–other people who were approaching the challenge of building up an audience in different clever ways. So I wound up talking not just to documentary filmmakers like Sandi DuBowski of Trembling Before G-d and Curt Ellis of KING CORN, but also musicians like Damian Kulash from OK Go and Jonathan Coulton, and visual artists like Natasha Wescoat and Matt W. Moore and even comedians like Eugene Mirman and Mark Day.”
Filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who is working on a very activist-oriented series of YouTube videos on the war in Afghanistan, told Kirsner, “The audience votes with their ‘forward’ button. If they see a video that they think has something to say, they forward it. All the money in the world and all the king’s horses can’t get them to do that. In that sense, it’s truly the free market.” In that sense, Kirsner said, engaging the online audience and turning them into collaborators who can spread a filmmaker’s message is one of the keys to succeeding in this new era. “It’s no longer about a multi-million dollar marketing campaign — it’s about that little seed of content you put out there that sparks debate and discussion and participation, and really connects with people,” Kirsner said.
Fans, Friends & Followers will be available on March 31.
Find out more information and how to purchase a paperback or digital copy >>
Digital Distribution: Bill Rose, THE LOSS OF NAMELESS THINGS
- Director of THE LOSS ON NAMELESS THINGS, Bill Rose.
- Oakley Hall III, a promising playwright on the verge of national recognition when a mysterious fall violently transformed his life.
With over 20 years of experience producing and directing documentaries and short films, Bill Rose’s work has been seen on television, the big screen and the film festival circuit. Today, Rose has come to embrace online distribution; his documentary THE LOSS OF NAMELESS THINGS is available on various platforms through the Digital Distribution Lab, a joint initiative between ITVS and PBS.
“I’m really psyched that it’s on Hulu and that it’s reaching new audiences. People are seeing the film that wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.” Rose says. ITVS digital partner Hulu has recently become the No. 2 video site in the United States behind YouTube, with 309 million video views last month.
In THE LOSS OF NAMELESS THINGS, Rose uses interviews with Oakley “Tad” Hall III and his friends and family to tell the haunting story of what happened after a single moment on a slippery bridge snatched Hall’s brilliant mind, and left him a stranger to himself and those who loved him. The film has sparked a flurry of new comments on Hulu and SnagFilms. While not that long ago, the film could have slipped off of the radar, Rose is heartened by these discussions.
“I’m excited about the fact that we can still be having a conversation about the film three years after it debuted on TV. We’re really seeing the viability of this, long tail,” says Rose, who is currently traveling the festival circuit to promote his latest documentary THIS DUST OF WORDS, another portrait of an early bloomer whose life went off the rails.
Though the simultaneous distribution of online video and DVD sales had worried him, Rose is encouraged by the idea that “the more available the film is out there in the world, the more it increases viability in all markets.”
Rose tells THE LOSS OF NAMELESS THINGS fans that Oakley Hall III is currently in Albany, NY directing a puppet theater production of Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry. Curtis Burch, former vice president of development for James Cameron, is working on the feature film version of THE LOSS OF NAMELESS THINGS.
This film and other full-length Independent Lens programs are available on our digital partners. Visit the video page and find out more >>
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