The ITVS Indie Roundup

Posted on March 15, 2013 by ITVS Staff

A curated list of indie news and recommendations from ITVS’s Rebecca Huval.

Now that social media can amplify the impact of documentaries, a “social action plan” is more useful than ever, according to MovieMaker Magazine. The must-have characteristics: “Hot Issue,” “Central Goal,” “Time Table,” “Activist Building,” and “Adaptability.”

The best of SXSW is still available online. According to Radiolab creator Jad Abumrad, ITVS’s Steve Goldbloom’s SXSW Diaries “are ACTUALLY FUNNY. Like really funny.”

San Franciscans: Check out The Center for Asian American Media Festival (a.k.a. CAAMFest)! From March 14 to 24, the festival will screen top-quality documentaries, feature films, and shorts.

From the 1980s TV show World of Photography, a young Annie Leibovitz talks about her already blossoming photography career, including portraits of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Steve Martin, John Belushi, Dolly Parton, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I can’t really say I’ve had much of a life outside of photography,” she said. “I think I’ve lived inside my pictures.”

Vimeo is apparently all about the indie filmmakers. This week, the company announced Vimeo On Demand, a self-distribution platform that allows filmmakers to reap a whopping 90 percent of the profits.

Up Next From the Half the Sky Movement

Posted on March 4, 2013 by ITVS Staff

On March 4th, the Half the Sky Movement releases a wide-reaching Facebook game designed to inspire many.

The Half the Sky Movement is cutting across platforms to ignite the change needed to put an end to the oppression of women and girls worldwide, the defining issue of our time. Inspired by journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s book of the same name, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide brings together video, websites, games, blogs and other educational tools to not only raise awareness of women’s issues, but to also provide concrete steps to fight these problems and empower women. Change is possible, and you can be part of the solution.

Last year, the movement released the documentary series as a special presentation of Independent Lens on PBS, making decisions along the way that would help the series reach a wider audience and bring awareness to the work of the nonprofits on the ground in 10 countries. This proved successful when the October broadcast garnered one billion mentions on social media – a true feat for a 4-hour long documentary on these sensitive issues. Continue reading →

Half the Sky, Three Times the Badges

Posted on October 1, 2012 by ITVS Staff

“Check-in” to the documentary and engage with Half the Sky and other viewers with Get Glue.

When Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide premieres on PBS tonight (9/8c), viewers will engage in a variety of ways: discussions with fans, friends, and stars on Twitter and Facebook; exclusive video content of celebrities and change-agents in yap.TV; and more.

Independent Lens has also partnered with GetGlue, the social TV check in service, to provide a special bonus badge to anyone who checks into both nights of broadcast. All you have to do is unlock both halves of the sky! (Clever, eh?)

Get one “half” badge for checking in tonight (pictured above); a second half for checking in on October 2; and a third, special bonus for checking into both nights.

So don’t forget to tune in, check in, and get involved!

Get Involved with Half the Sky

Posted on September 24, 2012 by ITVS Staff

The day has arrived! Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide premieres on Independent Lens this week (October 1&2) on PBS. This special two-night event has a myriad of ways you can be a part of the stories you’ll see, from a social TV application to a mosaic of Half the Sky fans.

With a range of social media activities in place, everyone is invited to be part of the Half the Sky movement. Here’s how you can join us:

Read, Discuss, and Win! For all the fans of the Half the Sky book, join your fellow readers in the GoodReads community, the largest association of book lovers on the web. We’ll have a Q&A there with author Sheryl WuDunn on Monday, October 1st at 1PM PST/ 4PM EST. Be sure to check out the site for an opportunity to win a signed copy of the Half the Sky book!

Find us on yap.TV. Want a more social experience during the broadcast of Half the Sky? Eager to find exclusive behind the scenes content with the celebrity activists and change agents? yap.TV is a social TV program guide where you can chat with fans online while watching programs. Half the Sky will provide exclusive content for their yap.TV audience. To sign up today, download the yap.TV app, add Half the Sky to your favorites, and watch America Ferrera interview Urmi Basu in a short film about the caste system. Tune in with yap.TV for more conversations and exclusives during the broadcast on October 1st and 2nd.

Tweet with the stars! Follow and interact with Gabrielle Union (@itsGabrielleU) as she live tweets during night one of the broadcast, while America Ferrera (@AmericaFerrera) and Olivia Wilde (@OliviaWilde) partake night two. Nicholas Kristof (@NickKristof) and Sheryl WuDunn (@WuDunn) will live tweet on both 10/1 and 10/2. Join the conversation by using #halfthesky. Continue reading →

A Hackathon Begins at Silverdocs

Posted on June 21, 2012 by ITVS Staff

The “Silverhacks” panel examines an open source community that unites documentary storytellers and technologists for two days to introduce an original web documentary. ITVS’s Jonathan Archer will participate in the event on Thursday, June 21 at 3p ET.

Hackathons offer documentarians the chance to collaborate with creative technologists to create a functioning prototype which they can continue to iterate.

“Silverhacks”, a collaboration between SilverDocs and the Living Docs project (Mozilla, ITVS, Tribeca Film Institute, BAVC and the Center for Social Media) added a new dimension — public data.
Continue reading →

If Angela Davis Had Twitter, Way Back When…

Posted on February 8, 2012 by ITVS Staff

Dr. Angela Davis reflects on how social media may have aided her activist pursuits in the 1960s. She is featured in The Black Power Mixtape, which airs this Thursday on Independent Lens. The clip is part of a larger interview conducted by PBS NEWSHOUR’s Hari Sreenivasan and produced by ITVS.

The documentary is the product of Swedish journalists, who came to the U.S. to document the anti-war and Black Power movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The film combines music, original 16mm footage, and contemporary audio interviews from leading African American artists, activists, musicians, and scholars.

Women and Girls Lead, Front and Center in NYC

Posted on October 6, 2011 by ITVS Staff

The multi-year public media initiative anchored several high-profile events in New York last month with actor Geena Davis and other key members of the Women and Girls Lead team.

The campaign made a big splash in Manhattan on Tuesday, September 21st with a panel at Mashable’s Social Good Conference at the 92nd Street Y, entitled: Women and Girls Lead: Where Storytelling, Gaming, and Public Media Converge. (NOTE: You can watch the entire panel in the video below…)

The panel was moderated by Aaron Sherinian, VP of Communications at the UN Foundation, and included: Geena Davis (Academy Award winner and advocate), Paula Kerger (president and CEO of PBS), Abigail Disney (executive producer of Women, War & Peace), and Asi Burak (co-founder of Games for Change).
Continue reading →