Watch END OF WAITING TIME on Global Voices on PBS WORLD

In 1936, General Francisco Franco lead a coup d’ etat against the Spanish Republic that gave rise to a brutal civil war. During his long dictatorship, hundreds of people were arrested, executed or disappeared. Today, family members of those who vanished have begun to look for their relatives’ remains and reflect on that dark period and its ongoing effect on their lives.

END OF WAITING TIME airs Sunday, September 20 at 10:00 PM on Global Voices on PBS WORLD (check local listings).

Tags: Francisco Franco, Human Rights, Spain

Watch SHADOW OF THE HOLY BOOK Tonight on the Sundance Channel

“Occasionally tongue-in-cheek but always cheeky…” Variety

Turkmenistan has some of the world’s largest oil and gas reserves in the world––as well as one of the worst records on human rights. Western companies have long supported the country’s dictator, Saparmurat Niyazov, through translating and praising the Ruhnama, his book of social and political propaganda. SHADOW OF THE HOLY BOOK explores how some companies use the Ruhnama to gain access to the country’s rich resources.

SHADOW OF THE HOLY BOOK airs tonight, September 14, at 9:00 PM on the Sundance Channel.

Find out what inspired the filmmaker to explore this topic >>

Tags: Human Rights, Ruhnama, Turkmenistan

Filmmaker Profile: Antonio Perez Molero, END OF WAITING TIME

During the long dictatorship of Spanish General Francisco Franco, hundreds of people were arrested, executed or disappeared. In END OF WAITING TIME, filmmaker Antonio Perez Molero talks with the families of those who vanished and have begun to search for answers about their relatives. The film will air at 10:00 PM on September 20 on Global Voices on PBS WORLD (check local listings). Learn more about the film and the challenges he faced.

Filmmaker Antonio Perez Molero

What has the reaction to the film been like?
In general, despite the delicate subject, the documentary has been well received.

The Spanish Civil War and its aftermath is still going on 70 years after it ended. It’s a continuous cause of debate amongst the Spanish people. We can’t agree about the causes, the events or those who are responsible. Now, however, these differences, happily, are fought through talking and writing—or making films and documentaries.

Perhaps the only thing that the vast majority of Spanish people have agreed on is the right of the families of war prisoners to recuperate the remains and memories of their loved ones. That may seem obvious today, but it has required a transformation of several years for Spanish public opinion to acknowledge that the moral right of family members should prevail over the long held fear in Spain that any kind of investigation of our civil war, even with a humanitarian objective, might lead the country to open old, painful and dangerous wounds.

This is the main theme of our documentary—the family members and their struggle to recover the remains and memories of the disappeared. And in fact, the majority of the people who have seen the documentary appreciated it, independently of their political inclinations.

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Tags: Francisco Franco, Human Rights, Spanish Civil War

Watch EN ROUTE TO BAGHDAD on Global Voices on PBS WORLD

Prior to his death in a Baghdad bombing attack in 2003, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello devoted his life to global humanitarian efforts in countries such as Mozambique, Cambodia and East Timor. EN ROUTE TO BAGHDAD is a portrait of Vieira de Mello and his extraordinary career and a tragic metaphor for the effort to bring stability to Iraq.

Watch a preview below:

EN ROUTE TO BAGHDAD airs Sunday, August 23 at 10:00 PM on Global Voices on PBS WORLD (check local listings).

Tags: Baghdad, Human Rights, Iraq

Open Call Recipients: Michael Collins and Marty Syjuco, Filmmakers of GIVE UP TOMORROW

ITVS’s Open Call provides finishing funds for single non-fiction or animation public television programs on any subject and from any viewpoint. Projects must have begun production as evidenced by a work-in-progress video.

Check out the clip below with filmmakers Michael Collins and Marty Syjuco, who received Open Call funds for their film GIVE UP TOMORROW, which looks intimately at the case of Paco Larrañaga, a young Spanish mestizo sentenced to death for the abduction, rape and murder of two Chinese-Filipino sisters on the island of Cebu. Learn more about their film, their grueling pre-production schedule and some of the challenges they faced in getting Paco to open up.

Interested in applying for Open Call? ITVS is looking for single public television programs on any subject, viewpoint or style. We fund programs that bring new audiences to public television and expand civic participation by bringing diverse voices into the public sphere. This year’s deadline is July 31, 2009.

Find more information about Open Call funding >>

Tags: Human Rights, Open Call, Paco Larrañaga, Philippines

Watch These ITVS Programs This Month on Public Television

BOLINAO 52, premiering this month on public television (check local listings). In 1988 a group of Vietnamese boat people attempted to flee their country in search of freedom. Once at sea the boat’s engine died leaving over 100 people stranded in the ocean. What happens next is an unbelievable story of perseverance that changed the lives of the survivors forever.

Watch a preview below:

BOLINAO 52 received ITVS LINCS funding and is distributed by the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA).

Also, be sure to check out HEART STRINGS: The Story of the Kamaka `Ukulele, premiering this month on public television (check local listings). Out of all the Hawaiian manufacturers that were crafting instruments at the dawn of the twentieth century, only Kamaka Hawaii remains in business today. HEART STRINGS is the story of four generations of one family that has carried on its namesake business and commitment towards craft, culture and heritage, maintaining age-old values with a distinctly Hawaiian point of view.

Watch a preview below:

HEART STRINGS received ITVS LINCS funding and is distributed by PBS Plus.

Learn more about these films and other upcoming ITVS programs >>

Tags: Hawaii, Human Rights, music, Vietnam

Watch WITNESSES TO A SECRET WAR on Global Voices on PBS WORLD

WITNESSES TO A SECRET WAR tells the stories of three generations of Hmong refugees as they struggle with their personal and political legacies. The Xiong family, who fought on America’s side of the “secret” war in Laos, tries to claim their own piece of the American dream while Hmong American Ka Ying Yang tries to understand her own similar family history.

“This is the epic story of the Hmong people––who against all odds, survived a collision between personal history and the history of American politics in Southeast Asia,” Twin Cities Daily Planet.

Watch a preview below:

WITNESSES TO A SECRET WAR airs Sunday, May 17 at 10:00 PM on Global Voices on PBS WORLD (check local listings).

Tags: Human Rights, Laos

Watch THE DICTATOR HUNTER on Global Voices on PBS WORLD

Are you a world traveler? Want to learn more about stories that affect our global community? Beginning on Sunday, April 26 at 10:00 PM (check local listings), tune in and watch the second season of Global Voices, the international documentary series produced by ITVS International for the PBS WORLD digital channel.

Kicking off this season is Dutch filmmaker Klaartje Quirijn’s THE DICTATOR HUNTER, which looks at Human Rights Watch lawyer Reed Brody who pursues former dictators worldwide in order to bring them to justice including Hissène Habré, one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century. Brody and former political prisoner Souleymane Guangueng work the system of international diplomacy like a chess game to bring Habré to trial for authorizing the torture and murder of thousands.

Watch a preview below:

Tags: Africa, Human Rights, international

BANISHED Wins Erik Barnouw Award

Marco Williams and Strickland family descendant Dorothy Pemberton from the Erik Barnouw Award-winning film BANISHED.

BANISHED, by Marco Williams, recently was awarded an Erik Barnouw Award, which recognizes outstanding reporting and programming on television or in documentary film that is concerned with American history.

From the 1860s to the 1920s, dozens of towns and counties across America violently expelled entire African American communities, forcing thousands of black families to flee their homes. A century later, these towns remain all white. BANISHED tells the story of three of these communities and their black descendants, who return to learn shocking histories.

BANISHED aired last season of Independent Lens and is a co-production of ITVS, Two Tone Productions, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the National Black Programming Consortium, with major funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Tags: African American, Human Rights, social justice

Second Season of Global Voices Launches on PBS WORLD on April 26

Former president Hissène Habré at the courthouse in Dakar who is pursued in THE DICTATOR HUNTER.

Are you a world traveler? Want to learn more about stories that affect our global community? Beginning April 26 at 10:00 PM (check local listings), tune in and watch the second season of Global Voices, the international documentary series produced by ITVS International for the PBS WORLD digital channel.

Kicking off this season is Dutch filmmaker Klaartje Quirijn’s THE DICTATOR HUNTER, which looks at Human Rights Watch lawyer Reed Brody who pursues former dictators worldwide in order to bring them to justice including Hissène Habré, one of the most brutal dictators of the 20th century. Brody and former political prisoner Souleymane Guangueng work the system of international diplomacy like a chess game to bring Habré to trial for authorizing the torture and murder of thousands.

Other films making their U.S. debut include WITNESSES TO A SECRET WAR, which tells the stories of three generations of Hmong refugees as they struggle with their personal and political legacies; RULES OF THE GAME, which follows the course of the 2007 elections in eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea from the perspective of three candidates; ESTILO HIP HOP, which chronicles the emergence of hip hop music in Latin America, its impact on youth culture and the regional politics that underscore its existence; END OF THE RAINBOW, a film that explores the human dimensions of industrial gold-mining in the remote locations of Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo and Guinea, West Africa; THE END OF THE WAITING TIME, which evokes the past and its effect on the present by looking at the long dictatorship of Spanish General Francisco Franco and the hundreds of people who were arrested, executed or disappeared. Today, the families of those who vanished have begun to search for answers about their relatives. The season draws to a close with ARCHEOLOGY OF MEMORY, a powerful, intense and imaginative musical journey that follows exiled Chilean musician, Quique Cruz, from the Bay Area to Chile and back as he creates his masterwork.

Encore presentations include the highly acclaimed mini-series THE NEW AMERICANS, the Emmy® Award–nominated AFGHANISTAN UNVEILED, DuPont Award winner SEOUL TRAIN, Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award winner SEÑORITA EXTRAVIADA and the acclaimed THE DEVIL’S MINER.

In addition to the PBS WORLD broadcast, select programs from last season and the current season of Global Voices will become available via such online distribution platforms as SnagFilms, Hulu, YouTube, Xbox and Zune.

Visit the Global Voices Web site and learn more >>

Check out the trailer below from the upcoming season of Global Voices:

Tags: Africa, Human Rights, international