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 >>

ITVS International enables independent producers from outside the United States to create documentaries for U.S. television. Through International Call, global storytellers introduce U.S. audiences to their world, their neighbors, opening a window into unfamiliar lives, experiences and perspectives.

International Call provides production and/or post-production funds for single non-fiction television documentaries that bring international perspectives, ideas, stories and people to a U.S. audience. This initiative is for non-U.S. producers and filmmakers who live outside the U.S.

Please note: ITVS International Call 2012 will be an all digital submissions process.

For more information about guidelines, eligibility and how to submit, please visit www.itvs.org/funding/international

The vast majority of today’s conflicts are not fought by nation states and their armies, but rather by informal entities: gangs and warlords using small arms and improvised weapons. Women, War & Peace by Abigail Disney, Gini Reticker, and Pamela Hogan, reveals how the post-Cold War proliferation of small arms has changed the landscape of war, with women becoming primary targets and suffering unprecedented casualties. Yet they are simultaneously emerging as necessary partners in brokering lasting peace and as leaders in forging new international laws governing conflict.

With narration by Matt Damon, Geena Davis, Tilda Swinton and Alfre Woodard;  Women, War & Peace spotlights the stories of women in conflict zones from Bosnia to Afghanistan and Colombia to Liberia, placing women at the center of an urgent dialogue about conflict and security, and reframing our understanding of modern warfare. Women, War & Peace premieres Tuesdays, October 11, 18, 25 and November 1 and 8 at 10 PM on PBS (check local listings).

Watch the trailer after the jump >>

Watch the full episode. See more Women War and Peace.

Women, War & Peace is the first broadcast of Women and Girls Lead, a three-year public media initiative designed to focus, educate, and connect women, girls, and their allies across the globe to address the challenges of the 21st century. The program is a co-production of THIRTEEN and Fork Films in association with WNET and ITVS

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.

Women, War & Peace is the first broadcast of Women and Girls Lead, a three-year public media initiative designed to focus, educate, and connect women, girls, and their allies across the globe to address the challenges of the 21st century. Filmed in conflict zones in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, and Liberia; with narration by actors Matt Damon, Geena Davis, Tilda Swinton and Alfre Woodard; Women, War & Peace premieres Tuesdays, October 11, 18, 25 and November 1 and 8 at 10 PM ET on PBS (check local listings).

Women, War & Peace is a co-production of THIRTEEN and Fork Films in association with WNET and ITVS.

Wangari Maathai, the first environmentalist and African woman to win the Nobel Prize, passed away on Monday while having treatment for ovarian cancer. Maathai was the founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, a grassroots organization encouraging women and families to plant trees.

She was recently the focus of the Independent Lens documentary Taking Root: The Story of Wangari Maathai and was featured in DIRT! The Movie. Maathai will be remembered for her work in women’s rights, democracy, and the environment.

Watch the trailer for Taking Root: The Story of Wangari Maathai >>

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.

Guest panelists Patricia S. Harrison (President & CEO of CPB), Geena Davis (Actor and Founder, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media), Abigail Disney (Filmmaker, Women, War & Peace), and Ambassador Donald Steinberg (Deputy Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development) delved into many topics related to Women’s Empowerment including women’s under and misrepresentation in American media and the lack of acknowledgment of women in international war and peace processes.

For a full recap of the event, click here >>

Plus, find highlights from the Women and Girls Lead event held on Tuesday at the 92nd Sreet Y in NYC, which was live blogged by BTB.

In honor of Independence Day, Global Voices and the WORLD Channel present four international documentaries throughout the month of July that focus on the different, difficult actions people and organizations have taken in the fight for independence.

The month begins with Storm of Emotions (July 3rd at 10 PM), chronicling the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the efforts to achieve democracy amidst great social and political turmoil. Read more about the Global Voices line up after the jump >>

July continues with the two-part documentary Cuba, An African Odyssey (July 10 and 17 at 10PM), showcasing the previously untold story of Cuba’s support for African revolutions. The Mosquito Problem & Other Stories (July 24 at 10PM) follows and focuses on one village as it is continuously transformed by ideologies, regimes, and dreams of economic prosperity. The month concludes with The Siege (July 31 at 10 PM), a documentary about a historic event in 1996 when the Peruvian Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement seized the Japanese ambassador’s residence in Lima and held dozens of foreign diplomats hostage for 126 days.

All four documentaries will be broadcast on Sunday nights at 10 PM on the WORLD Channel.  Find a comprehensive overview of the 2011 series and a calendar of online events on the WORLD Channel’s website.

A Working Mom by filmmaker Limor Pinhasov

Being a working mom rocks!  We’re the ones chosen to advise policy, lead teams and manage projects. We make our own rules, run our own businesses, and raise our kids.  We’re sharp, whip smart, well adjusted, and reliable.

The Innovator:“Making adjustments to traditional work situations can make a work life balance a little more realistic for working families. I have been asking for some telecommuting hours, but there was no official policy in place for this sort of thing. Human resource departments want to keep good employees, it may be up to you to open this door and walk through it with them. Present your own proposal about how this can be beneficial to both parties.You have to do the research, know what you want and ask for it. With much discussion initiated by me, and definitely some patience, I am now piloting this working situation so my employer can write policy about it.” ~ Liz PW.

The Enforcer:“It takes discipline and structure to work from home and it isn’t a joke to me, and people in my life have learned this the hard way. I kicked a friend out after a 20-minute visit because she arrived at 11:40 though I’d invited her to come over at 9:30 a.m. I’d told her, because the ongoing childcare swap for my Thursdays involves me taking the kids in the morning and the other mom taking them for the afternoon. When Mom #2 arrived right on time for the noon double-daughter pick-up, I told my friend I had to go to work. She looked at me like I had 5 heads. ‘But you work from home!’ But I work. From home.” ~ Amanda R.

The Multi-Tasker:“Work stays at work, and home stays at home, right? Wrong. Home goes to work, and work goes to home. And while at home, and on top of your work, comes your need to spend time with your child. Conundrum? Nah. I went out and bought my son a ‘Thomas The Tank Engine’ laptop computer, and invited him to work by my side. That way, when I do work from home, I still get to spend time with my son.” ~ Stacy B.

The Closer:“I’ve been a sales executive for ten years, and I’m good at my job. In the beginning though, I struggled with relationship building. I had a hard time connecting on a personal level and building trust was a challenge. But when I became a mother, I unconsciously owned the space and felt comfortable discussing it and sympathizing with clients I knew were in the same position. The floodgates opened! Identifying myself as a person with great responsibility outside of my job made it easy for others to trust me. I’ve closed more sales in my role as a working mom, than I did before.” ~ Karen C.

The Role Model:“One of my first back-to-work jobs after both kids were in school was at a museum in NYC. I was an assistant to one of the VPs. What we had in common; was kids in NYC private schools. What got me the job was telling her if I could handle the calendars of 2 Brearley girls, I could handle hers. More importantly, I went back to work, and then back to school to pursue better work, because I have daughters. I had a feeling about wanting to be one of their role models as a strong woman with her own life.” ~ Annie S.

The Communicator:“…having a child of my own has made me care even more for the children I work with professionally. I am better now at seeing the whole child. I also think I understand parents more now that I am a parent and this makes communication (in general) easier.” ~ Lauren R.

Want to learn more? Tune in to a the WORLD channel on Sunday, June 19^th to watch the Global Voices premiere of Working Mom, and be sure to share your own stories below.

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.

Yet some favorable winds and currents for independent filmmakers are popping up within the storm.  Social media and crowd-funding are formidable tools for many DIY efforts.  Engagement networks have created new funding and promotion partners in organizations and communities that value media.  No less a commercial titan than Oprah herself has carved out new television real estate for documentaries.  And independent champions like Chicken and Egg, Women Make Movies, The Fledgling Fund, and so many others continue their ongoing invaluable support for filmmakers.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

Over the last decade of technological change, ITVS too has sought out these currents, working to serve filmmakers, public television, and the public — with more funding, more programs, and more ways to find and engage viewers. The creation of Independent Lens brought in 22-27 new broadcast slots for independents.  Amid globalization and a zeitgeist for cultural exchange, ITVS International funded international programs and took the work of U.S. indies abroad. IndiesLab helped open doors and set fair terms at iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, and beyond; Global Voices opened a second or third window for older programs; the reboot of Community Cinema alongside social media opened 100 markets where local partners and stations come together around the power of independent film; FUTURESTATES and Project 360 created opportunities for makers focused on new media.

Our newest initiative, Women and Girls Lead, represents another current, one that brings together many of the last decade’s opportunities and builds on our work around powerful storytelling.  A multiyear initiative to focus, educate, and connect citizens worldwide — Women and Girls Lead provides a frame to highlight 50 compelling documentaries, both premieres and archive selections.  These documentaries represent a groundswell of stories about the leadership of women and girls facing tremendous challenges.

For public television and the public we serve, this effort will stand beside system-wide efforts like the American Graduate initiative, which raises awareness of the high school dropout crisis, and the mortgage town halls, using the power of media to start and sustain conversations around a widely shared set of issues. Details will emerge in the coming weeks on how we will do this work, with which partners and films, and with what goals.  What is more important, right now, is to make clear what we believe this initiative can do for filmmakers in the 21^st century marketplace.

First, Women and Girls Lead will help bring back to the limelight some “evergreen” films that are as relevant today as the day they premiered, finding new audiences for work online, through live engagement, and even rebroadcasts.  There will also be valuable cross-promotion, cross-distribution, and cross-engagement opportunities for films linked and grouped together.  Pulling together independent work as a content block has been critical to claiming real estate in the past; it’s worked with buckets like P.O.V., Independent Lens, and even online with IndiesLab.

Now, technology, and opportunity have gelled to connect the dots that too often go unconnected.  Most importantly, we believe Women and Girls Lead as a model will provide an undeniable case for the social value of documentary film — not just for the occasional documentary “blockbuster” but for the whole collective of independent work that thousands of filmmakers do on every important issue facing civil society here and abroad, with each film a contributor to long-term conversations that benefit all.

Read more about the Women and Girls Lead campaign in Monday’s edition of The New York Times

Our documentaries have covered everything from glass-ceiling-shattering female heads of state to the grassroots movements in developing nations led by women who refused to accept no for an answer.

Visit our new Women’s History Month page and explore content that represent a cross-section of our best programming about remarkable women, including some great resources for educators to use in their classrooms.

Plus, revisit our chat with PBS NEWSHOUR on empowering women in The Congo and beyond. Held on International Women’s Day, the discussion included the Managing Director of Amnesty International, along with the filmmakers and subject of Pushing the Elephant.