The New York Times: Dot Earth Blog: If a Tree Falls, Can it when an Oscar?
…an extraordinary documentary by the brilliant young filmmakers Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman that explores the prosecution of members of the Earth Liberation Front for a series of costly arson fires.

The New York Times: Year-End Lists: Top Ten Movies of 2011
David Weissman’s documentary We Were Here was among the top films (fiction & documentary) selected by Stephen Holden.

Womens eNews: Daughters of Imprisoned Moms Regroup for a Sequel
Troop 1500, rebroadcasting tonight on PBS’s Independent Lens, is about Girl Scouts who trek together to visit mothers behind bars. Director Ellen Spiro talks here about the reunion sequel she is making with the daughters, five years later.

Realscreen.com: PBS unveils 2012 Black History Month line-up
U.S. public broadcaster PBS has unveiled the programming for Black History Month in February, including a number of specials and feature docs looking at a variety of historical events from the post-Emancipation era to the rise of the Black Power movement.

Visit our pressroom to find additional coverage of ITVS programs >>

Bitter Seeds
By Micha X. Peled

Family Portrait in Black and White
By: Julia Ivanova, Boris Ivanov (Reflecting Images – Best of the Fest)

Give Up Tomorrow
By: Marty Syjuco, Michael Collins (Reflecting Images – Best of the Fest)

Bill T. Jones: A Good Man
By: Gordon Quinn, Bob Hercules

Heart of Sky – Heart of Earth
By: Eric Black, Frauke Sandig

The Island President
By: Jon Shenk, Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen

Invoking Justice
By: Deepa Dhanraj (Reflecting Images – Panorama)

The Interrupters
By: Steve James (Steve James retrospective)

The New Americans
By: Steve James (Steve James retrospective)

Putin’s Kiss
By: Lise Birk Pedersen, Helle Faber, Martin Dalgaard

To Be Heard
By: Roland Lagardi-Laura, Deborah Shaffer, Edwin Martinez, Amy Sultan (Doc U)

When the Drum is Beating
By: Whitney Dow

5 Broken Cameras
By: Emad Bornat, Guy Davidi, Serge Gordey

The IDA Awards celebrate outstanding achievements in documentary filmmaking and three ITVS funded films received nominations for the 2011 Awards. All three nominees were originally broadcast on the award-winning PBS series POV.  See the entire list of ITVS nominees after the jump:

Best Feature Award Nomination
Better This World by Katie Galloway & Kelly Duane de la Vega

IDA Humanitas Award Nomination
The Learning by Ramona S. Diaz

ABC News Videosource Award Nomination
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
By Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith

Additionally, Danfung Dennis, the director of the acclaimed Hell and Back Again (coming to Independent Lens in Spring 2012) will receive the Jacqueline Donnet Award, which recognizes filmmakers who have made a significant impact in documentary film.

And POV and American Experience  both received nominations for Best Continuing Series.

Congratulations to all the nominees!

For the entire list of the 2011 IDA Award nominees, click here >>

CNN.com: Muslim superhero comics meets resistance in U.S.
Naif Al-Mutawa anticipated a struggle when he launched an Islam-inspired comic book series that he hoped would become a symbol of toleration. He worried about the comics being banned in Saudi Arabia – which wound up happening, briefly – and he expected to be challenged by conservatives in Islam, since Al-Mutawa wanted to buck the trend of Islamic culture being directly tied to the Koran. But it wasn’t an Islamic cleric that stalled the series, called “The 99,” after the 99 attributes of Allah, which the superheroes are supposed to embody. It is the American market, and the voices of Islam’s Western critics, that have caused the most problems for “The 99,” says Al-Mutawa, who is the focus of a PBS documentary airing next week.

New York Times: An American Minority’s Road to Rights
It may be the least-publicized revolution of our time but the one whose impact ultimately reaches the furthest, affecting the way our buildings and buses are built, the way our schools are structured, the way our businesses conduct hiring and outfit their work stations. It’s the disability-rights movement, and Lives Worth Living, a Thursday Independent Lens on PBS, reconstructs how it emerged and eventually pushed through the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

Los Angeles Times: Donor Unknown review: Common ground beyond nature, nurture
Donor Unknown is a celebration of commonality, of the connections you can’t deny: Harrison’s kids define themselves by what they share, with one another and with their donor-father — their eyebrows and foreheads, their love of animals, their sense of humor and way of tucking their hair behind their ears. We are all the product of individual circumstances, Donor Unknown says, but you can only nurture what nature provides.

Wired.com: At Popcorn Hackathon, Coders Team With Filmmakers to Supercharge Web Video
“We always talk about this idea of how in the future, filmmakers will need a technology partner almost the way they need an editor today,” said Matthew Meschery, the director of digital initiatives at Independent Television Service. “So there’s kind of this social experiment around collaborating with a coder or technologist … This was an opportunity to put this into practice.”

The DDF provides up to $15,000 in research and development funding to independent producers of color to develop single documentary programs for public television. Projects should speak to the ITVS mission to serve underserved audiences with programs that take creative risks, explore complex issues, inspire dialogue and express points of view seldom seen on commercial or public television.

Funded activities may include travel, research, script development, preliminary production for
fundraising/work-in-progress reels, or other early phase activities.

DDF accepts:

• Projects that have not yet begun production
• Programs that can become eligible for ITVS production funding initiatives as single programs of standard broadcast length (half-hour or one-hour). In rare cases ITVS will consider feature-length programs.

DDF does not accept:

• Proposals for completed projects seeking distribution
• Series proposals or fictional dramas
• Projects intended solely for theatrical release

Find more information about guidelines and how to apply on our website.

Calling all independent media makers (yes, we’re talking to you filmmakers!). Do you want to explore new ways of telling your story? Do you have an idea that takes advantage of both traditional and digital media? Then take a look at Localore, a new initiative from our friends at The Association of Independents in Radio (AIR), that’s designed to fuel public media’s capacity for innovative storytelling and journalism.

Through Localore, AIR will recruit talented radio, TV, film, and online producers to lead 10 public station-based projects, blending approaches to broadcast and digital platforms. This means mixing traditional media with mobile applications, online video, digital games, data visualization and maps — anything that will help to bring stories to the public in new ways beyond broadcast.

Interested producers are invited to submit proposals until November 10th at Localore.net.A second round of vetting in December will call on producers, matched with incubator stations, to submit final proposals.

Watch the station runway video (above) to see which public stations are interested in partnering with Independents. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to get your innovative project considered for this game-changing initiative.

ITVS nearly got a clean sweep in the Best Documentary category of the IFP Gotham Awards with ITVS films receiving four out of the five nominations.  Check out the list of ITVS Best Documentary nominees along with their trailers after the jump >>

Better This World 
By Katie Galloway and Kelly Duane de la Vega
Aired on POV this past September
Two childhood friends from Midland, Texas fall under the sway of a charismatic revolutionary who leads them down a path that changes their lives forever.

The Woodmans
By C. Scott Willis
Airing on Independent Lens on December 22, 2011 (check local listings)
The Woodmans is an inspiring portrait of one family’s fall and redemption in the often brutal world of art.

Hell and Back Again
by Danfung Dennis
Coming to Independent Lens in Spring 2012
What does it mean to lead men in war? What does it mean to come home — injured physically and psychologically — and build a life anew?

The Interrupters
By Steve James
Coming to PBS
A look at a group of men and women — most of them former gang leaders and ex-cons — that are trying to “interrupt” shootings and protect their communities from the violence they once employed.

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 >>

The co-recipients were honored for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work. The Women and Girls Lead campaign has direct connections to two of the laureates recognized by the Nobel committee.

The story of Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee is told in the documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, part of the five-part Women, War and Peace series which premiered on October 11 on PBS, while Johnson Sirleaf was profiled in the  documentary Iron Ladies of Liberia.  Both films are a core part of the multi-year initiative — designed to focus, educate and connect audiences worldwide.

Join all of us in congratulating this year’s distinguished winners of the Peace Prize and enjoy the video below, which profiles their work through film.