EILEEN FISHER, INC. Joins Women and Girls Lead

Posted on September 5, 2012 by ITVS Staff

ITVS welcomes support for three-year initiative using media for global education and engagement to support women and girls.

Women and Girls Lead is delighted to announce it will continue to support a growing movement to connect citizens worldwide to powerful stories of women as agents of change with a new three-year investment from EILEEN FISHER, Inc. The funding will expand community engagement with forthcoming films including Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, MAKERS, and some 50 other award-winning independent documentary films.

“Through her own good work in inspiring and empowering women, Eileen Fisher is connecting the dots between mentorship, education, and change,” said Sally Jo Fifer, president and CEO of ITVS. “We are thrilled she is bringing her passion and purpose to the Women and Girls Lead public media initiative.

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Announcing the Seventh Season of Community Cinema

Posted on August 22, 2012 by ITVS Staff

Drum roll, please…. ITVS is excited to announce the seventh season of Community Cinema, which offers free screenings for communities nationwide!

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide kick starts the seventh season of Community Cinema

Join Community Cinema this season as they kick-off the screening series with Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Maro Chermayeff. This landmark documentary miniseries (based on the bestselling book of the same name by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn) follows six actress-advocates — America Ferrera, Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union, and Olivia Wilde — as they travel to Africa and Asia and meet inspiring, courageous individuals who are confronting oppression and developing real, meaningful solutions.

Community Cinema takes on diverse issues from current news headlines, such as As Goes Janesville, Brad Lichtenstein’s three-year chronicle about the debate over the future of America’s middle class, a debate that has become a pitched battle over unions in the normally tranquil state of Wisconsin; Macky Alston’s Love Free or Die, a portrait of Gene Robinson, the first openly gay elected bishop in the high church traditions of Christendom, whose 2003 elevation in the New Hampshire diocese ignited a worldwide firestorm in the Anglican Communion; and Soul Food Junkies, Byron Hurt’s personal look at the black community’s love affair with soul food, its significance, and its health consequences. Continue reading →

Find Your Audience: Building Long-Term Engagement with Passionate Viewers

Posted on August 7, 2012 by ITVS Staff

ITVS’s Rebecca Huval discusses research, news, and trends that come out of ITVS’s IndiesLab.

Documentary filmmakers have complex motivations for producing films. Unlike the makers of, say, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, most nonfiction directors want their viewers to do more than simply pay for theatre tickets. They’re after long-term engagement. But how should doc makers find their audience if they aren’t a blockbuster like Waiting for Superman?

It starts with the selection of a subject. From the moment you decide to make a film about a certain topic, you’re also choosing an audience. Over at POV, Edward J. Delaney explained how to find a micro-audience, meaning, the viewers who already have a vested interest in your topic. One telling case is that of the 2007 Cannes award-winning documentary Zoo. Continue reading →

Think Win-Win: Charles Meyer on NCME and Community Cinema

Posted on August 25, 2011 by ITVS Staff

Executive Director of the National Center for Media Engagement (NCME) Charles Meyer outlines his organization’s recently announced partnership with ITVS’s Community Cinema.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Stephan Covey’s fourth habit encourages, “Think Win-Win.” As Covey points out – and as we’ve discovered in our community engagement work with public media at NCME – Win-Win is a frame of mind that constantly seeks mutual benefit in all interactions. Win-win means agreements or solutions that are mutually beneficial and satisfying. In other words, solutions that grow a bigger pie. That’s what effective collaboration is about, too. And collaborating is a key behavior among those with an engagement ethos.

There’s no better example than our new “win-win” partnership with ITVS and its highly successful Community Cinema program. In just six years, Community Cinema has expanded to more than 100 communities across the country, producing more than 2,500 screenings and welcoming over 150,000 participants. Its commitment to bringing communities and local organizations together through the featured documentaries aligns perfectly with NCME’s CPB-funded mission to support public media in working collaboratively with their communities to discover, understand, and address community concerns.
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Community Cinema Remembers Lynn Allen

Posted on April 19, 2011 by ITVS Staff

Community Cinema is the largest engagement program in broadcast history in 100 markets across the country. The program started in Boise, Idaho with Regional Outreach Coordinator Lynn Allen. The Community Cinema family recently lost our colleague, friend, and an inspirational leader. Here is a tribute to her 30 years of service to Public Broadcasting.

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ITVS Takes Engagement Behind Bars and into Schools

Posted on September 24, 2010 by ITVS Staff

A Village Called Versailles was one of the films screened before inmates

As we gear up for another season of Community Cinema, BTB is highlighting some recent coverage of how this program has been adapted to engage inmates in San Francisco and Los Angeles. These pilot initiatives are furthering our mission of reaching underserved communities, including the incarcerated.

This past year, Community Cinema screenings were incorporated into two educational programs: the Five Keys Charter School in San Francisco — the first charter high school based in a prison — and the M.E.R.I.T. Program in L.A., which provides educational and life-skills courses for inmates.

Read more about these programs from this recent profile by the National Center for Media Engagement.

Tip of the Day: Engage Beyond the Broadcast

Posted on June 23, 2010 by ITVS Staff

The internet is completely revolutionizing all kinds of media by freeing creators from linearity and one-way paradigms. Here at ITVS, we’ve been working with filmmakers for more than a decade to create multifaceted and multi-platform projects that liberate the story from dusty old limitations.

It’s easy to get stuck in a familiar way of doing things, but when you begin to think of your audience as a collaborator, and technology as an ally, you break into new dimensions and open up fresh perspectives on your story. We have a large library of the interactive projects we’ve produced in the past 10 year, and encourage you to check them out for ideas and inspiration.

Use Films to Organize and Engage Your Community

Posted on May 21, 2010 by ITVS Staff

Can a film change the world if everyone just sits on their sofas and watches it, and then goes to bed? OK, sure, films can change minds and inform, but at ITVS, our goal is to leverage great films to engage and activate communities. The whole idea is to create a conversation — from the local town hall to the halls of justice around the world.

If you work for a community organization, a non-profit, or dedicate your free energy to volunteer for a cause you feel passionately about, ITVS.org is an amazing and easy-to-use resource to help you to foster dialog and move the conversation forward.

There are many ways you can use our new website to access films that address the issues you’re interested in:

Attend a Community Cinema or theatrical screening: Type in your zip code and find out when you can attend a screening in your area, often with spirited panel discussions and additional resources to delve into the subject presented.

Search by topic: Right from our new front page, you can search our nearly 800 films to find the ones that speak directly to your cause.

Drill down into our catalog: Narrow your search by region, genre, or television series to find the film that most accurately suits your needs.

And check out our new engagement section, where you can learn more about Community Cinema as well as our engagement campaigns that include discussion guides, printable posters and postcards, and more.

Dive in and let us help you get your community talking about the issues that matter where you live. And share your success stories with us!