Free
Now on Indies Showcase: Lost Boys of Sudan
Emmy Award-nominated documentary from Jon Shenk and Megan Mylan follows two young refugees of Sudan’s civil war through their first year in America. Lost Boys of Sudan streams free until Sept. 7th on ITVS’s Indies Showcase.
Orphaned as boys by Sudan’s civil war, Peter Dut and Santino Chuor survived lion attacks and gunfire to reach a Kenyan refugee camp with thousands of other children. After a decade in the camp, they come to America. Lost Boys of Sudan follows them from Africa through their first year in the United States as they are confronted with the abundance and alienation of contemporary America.
Watch Lost Boys of Sudan now on ITVS’s Indies Showcase >>
Now Streaming on Indies Showcase: Still Life With Animated Dogs
In Still Life With Animated Dogs we meet the canine companions who helped shape animator Paul Fierlinger’s evolution as an artist and as a man. Watch the Peabody Award winning animated film streaming free today on ITVS’s Indies Showcase.
Still Life with Animated Dogs traces Paul Fierlinger’s tumultuous life from Stalinist Czechoslovakia to the United States as seen through his relationships with his dogs. It is Fierlinger’s loyalty and caring for his dogs that sustains him even in an atmosphere of oppression and suspicion. Each dog serves as a marker of its master’s personal growth from a misanthrope to an artist who appreciates the divine powers of nature.
Watch Still Life with Animated Dogs now on ITVS’s Indies Showcase >>
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New Contest: Best. Teacher. Ever!
Teachers — often overworked, frequently underappreciated, sometimes demonized, usually meagerly compensated. But all of us have had teachers who helped us grow up and make sense of the world, and to find our place in it.
In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week (but really all year long) we want educators to get the props (and resources) they deserve. Our friends at Community Classroom do that by giving teachers free stuff: standards-aligned lesson plans, fabulous independent film content (often using Independent Lens films), innovative games, discussion guides, and more.
Most of us have a teacher who stands out in our memory as the one who really sparked our passion for learning or for a specific subject, or encouraged us at a key point in our academic lives. Or perhaps you work with a teacher who inspires his or her students in an exceptional way.
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Tribeca Film Festival Underway in NYC
The Tribeca Film Festival gets started today in New York and runs until May 1. The festival was founded in 2002 as a response to the events of 9/11, to help Lower Manhattan recover after the tragedy, and to celebrate the vitality and diversity of New York City through filmmaking.
Each year ITVS participates in the festival by meeting with filmmakers involved in the Tribeca All Access program. From April 22-28, ITVS’ Vice President of Programming Claire Aguilar will be in NYC to participate in the All Access development meetings with producers of color.
Three ITVS-funded films will also be on display at this year’s festival, including: Donor Unknown, Give Up Tomorrow, and When the Drum is Beating.
Plus, a special All Access screening of shorts from the second season of FUTURESTATES will screen on Saturday, April 23rd at 2:30PM at the Clearview Cinemas in Chelsea. This year’s selection, listed below, highlights Tribeca All Access alumni as well as emerging New York filmmaking talent:
Celebrate Earth Day with a Social Screening of Garbage Dreams
The exclusive online screening will be held on Thursday, April 21 at 9PM EDT / 6PM PDT on Independent Lens’ Facebook Page and on Livestream.
Filmed over four years, the documentary goes inside the world of Egypt’s Zaballeen (Arabic for ‘garbage people’) to reveal the lives of two teenage boys born into the trash trade. For generations, the residents of Cairo have depended on the Zaballeen to collect their trash, paying them only a minimal amount for their garbage collection services.
These entrepreneurial garbage workers survive by recycling 80 percent of all the garbage they collect, creating what is arguably the world’s most efficient waste disposal system. Recycling to lift themselves out of poverty, the Zaballeen have, through necessity, devised ingenious solutions to one of the world’s most pressing problems.
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Hey Teachers! You’ll Dig This
If you’re a teacher, we know times are tough. You are struggling to enrich your classroom, but beset on all sides by budget cuts, growing class sizes, and a dearth of basic supplies. Fear not – the new ITVS.org will help you find free (yes free) standards-based resources for your classroom that will engage and inform your students in new and innovative ways.
Our newly redesigned website is now a content destination for educators and youth-serving organizations. It now hosts our complete collections of lesson plans, activities, learning games, and film modules drawn from the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens and ITVS’s Global Perspectives Project. You asked for it, and we listened: While we’ve been producing these resources for years now, the new ITVS.org website makes them more accessible and easier to use than ever.
The search and sort function in our section for educators will allow you to find the appropriate resources that align with the subject matter in your syllabus right from the landing page. And our crisp new online video player will allow you to stream film modules in your classroom right from our site.
Now you have even more options — our lesson plans are available on the site as HTML pages, you can still download them as PDFs, or get them on a DVD you can order online.
So what are you waiting for? Get your hands on our free resources and watch your students respond when they make connections between the facts in their textbooks and the films, games, and exercises we’re offering 24 hours a day.
Community Cinema Featured on Channel 9 in Washington, D.C.
Local TV station WUSA Channel 9 in Washington D.C. featured an in-studio interview with local Community Cinema Coordinator Michon Boston on Thursday, December 3, 2009. Watch Michon discuss the Community Cinema program, local partners and upcoming films in her live TV interview.
Win a Free DVD Copy of YOUNG@HEART!
Who doesn’t like to win free stuff?
Starting today, we’re giving away FREE DVD copies of YOUNG@HEART––a film that USA Today film critic Claudia Puig calls “A heartening and poignant affirmation of the transformative power of music.”
To enter, simply read Beyond the Box blog and share your comments on a post. Tell us what you think about an article on the blog, review one of our films or let us know how a particular issue relates to your life. Your comments must relate to the actual content of the blog post to qualify.
One DVD copy will be given away each week leading up to the Independent Lens premiere of YOUNG@HEART on Tuesday, January 12 at 9:00 PM on PBS (check local listings).
Looking for inspiration? Tell us what you think about the recent blog post ITVS’s OPEN CALL: Inside the Mind of the Panelists. Comment on this post and you’re entered to win. It’s that easy!
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