Media That Matters Presents: Women & Girls Matter

Women & Girls Matter is a day-long summit featuring panels and workshops on the obstacles and opportunities facing women and girls in filmmaking and new media.  The event takes place on October 29, 2011 in New York.

The Women & Girls Matter event will include a day of panels and workshops presented by Media That Matters. The summit is designed to look at the obstacles and opportunities for women and girls in filmmaking and new media, highlighting the values women bring to their work, and to open up a dialogue for ways to create new spaces for female voices in the field.

The day focuses on the needs of women in film and will conclude with concrete actions for participants to take in order to help bring the voices of women and girls out of the margins and into the mainstream.

Women & Girls Matter takes place on October 29 in New York City. For more information, click here >>

You can register for the event online at womenandgirlsmatter.eventbrite.com >>

 Join public media’s Women and Girls Lead campaign on Facebook

Tags: Arts Engine, film festival, girls, media, Media That Matters, New York, Panel, women

Watch an Exclusive Online Screening of Women, War & Peace on Thursday at 4:30PM PT

On Thursday, September 29, 4:30PM PT / 6:30PM CT / 7:30PM ET— ITVS Community Cinema, Ladies Home Journal, THIRTEEN, and Fork Films will present an exclusive online preview screening of Women War & Peace on ITVS’s Livestream channel in advance of its television premiere on PBS. The film is the first broadcast in ITVS’s Women and Girls Lead initiative.

On Thursday, September 29, 6:30 PM CT, ITVS Community Cinema, Ladies Home Journal, THIRTEEN, and Fork Films will present an exclusive online screening of Women War & Peace on ITVS’s Livestream channel in advance of its television premiere on PBS.

The screening will be followed by an online panel discussion with producer Abigail E. Disney and director Gini Reticker. Online participants will receive an opportunity to ask questions and discuss their reactions to the selected scenes with the filmmakers to learn how women, despite suffering unprecedented casualties, are simultaneously emerging as critical partners in brokering peace and as leaders in forging new international laws governing conflict.

The half hour online screening will feature Women, War & Peace Episode 3: Peace Unveiled. When the U.S. troop surge was announced in late 2009, women in Afghanistan knew that the ground was being laid for peace talks with the Taliban. Peace Unveiled follows three women who immediately began to organize to make sure that women’s rights don’t get traded away in the deal. Narrated by Tilda Swinton, Peace Unveiled premieres October 25, 2011 at 10 PM ET on PBS.
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Tags: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Empowerment, girls, international, leadership, Liberia, PBS, peace, war, women

Meridian, ITVS, and CPB Celebrate Global Women’s Empowerment

Last week, ITVS and CPB celebrated the launch of the Council on Women’s Leadership and the Women and Girls Lead initiative at the Meridian International Center in Washington, D.C.

On Thursday, September 15, Meridian, ITVS, and CPB, celebrated the launch of the Council on Women’s Leadership and shared a special preview of the Women and Girls Lead campaign. The focus of the evening was to raise awareness about the role of women and girls around the world, with a particular emphasis on women as leaders and agents of change.
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Tags: CPB, Empowerment, Geena Davis, girls, Global, international, media, Meridian, misrepresentation, PBS, women

Now Streaming on Indies Showcase: Girls Like Us

Emmy Award-winning documentary from Jane C. Wagner and Tina DiFeliciantonio takes a disarming look into the lives of teenage girls, working to shape their identities in the ’90s. Girls Like Us streams free until Friday, August 26 as part of ITVS’s Indies Showcase.

An ethnically diverse group of four working class girls strut, flirt, and testify in this vibrant, affecting portrait of teenage girls’ experiences of sexuality. Filmed in South Philadelphia and following its subjects from the ages of 14 to 18, Girls Like Us reveals the conflicts of growing up female by examining the impact of class, sexism, and violence on the dreams and expectations of young girls.

Watch Girls Like Us now on Indies Showcase >>

Tags: 90s, Emmy, film festival, girls, P.O.V., PBS, Philadelphia, teen, teenage, women, working class

ITVS Introduces Women and Girls Lead, a Public Media Initiative

By Sally Jo Fifer

ITVS President and CEO Sally Jo Fifer announces the Women and Girls Lead campaign — a major public media initiative that uses independent films to focus, educate, and connect audiences in support of women and girl’s leadership and development around the world.

It’s no secret that the competitive sea in which ITVS and independent filmmakers paddle is not getting any calmer.  Over the last year, more than 1,000 proposals came to us for funding.  The Sundance Film Festival received 841 documentary submissions.  Public broadcasting is grappling with marketplace and demographic challenges. New metrics and “theory of change” frameworks have shifted foundations’ approaches to individual films. The public clicks like crazy between 120 television channels and 300 million websites vying for their attention — and that same public flunks miserably at any basic test of civic knowledge.
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Tags: education, girls, international, ITVS, leadership, PBS, public media, women

A Girl’s Life Premiering Tonight on Public Television

“A Girl’s Life on PBS is a Wednesday TV pick… Author Rachel Simmons interviews parents, teachers, and social workers helping young women face the challenges of adolescence in the 21st century.”
- The Seattle Times

The American girl is becoming more and more powerful –– and she knows it. She competes on the athletic field and regularly outperforms boys in the classroom. But this picture of empowerment can also be deceiving. In A Girl’s Life, author Rachel Simmons brings together the latest research on the psychological, physical, and emotional development of girls, to help parents, educators and all concerned better understand the obstacles girls face during their adolescent years.

A Girl’s Life premieres tonight, December 30 at 8:00 PM on public television (check local listings).

Tags: adolescence, bullying, cyber, female, girls