ITVS in the News

A sampling of coverage from Huffington Post, Current, The Washington Post, and more…

Huffington Post: Public Media is America
To be a fully functioning society, we need good quality public media the same way we need good quality public schools, colleges and universities, public hospitals, transportation, libraries, parks and recreation, and arts and culture.
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Current: Tips on Securing Broadcast on National Public Television
I always advise producers to submit their program to ITVS even though it would be a miracle for a program to be accepted on a first try. You can trust that folks at ITVS know what PBS wants and they offer extremely helpful feedback from inside the system.
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Tags: huffington post, PBS, Washington Post

Revisiting Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire

Paul Conrad

Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad passed away on Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 86 years old.

Conrad’s legendary career spanned half a century, allowing him to take aim at everyone from Harry Truman to Dick Cheney. Among many prestigious journalistic awards, Conrad’s favorite distinction was his 1973 inclusion on Richard Nixon’s enemies list.

Independent Lens showcased the artist’s career in the film: Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire. Narrated by Tom Brokaw, the film includes nearly 200 Conrad cartoons and interviews with the artists’ family, friends, and colleagues.

Check out a gallery of Conrad’s work on the Independent Lens website.

Plus, watch Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire, streaming now on Netflix.

The film joins over a dozen ITVS projects now available to Netflix subscribers, including: › Continue reading

Tags: cartoonist, drawing fire, Independent Lens, ITVS, nixon, paul conrad, PBS, public television, pulitzer prize, tom brokaw, Washington Post

In the News: The Latest on ITVS Programs

Film Series to Empower Women
Independent Television Service, producers of Emmy-award winning documentaries for public television, has teamed up with the Chicago Foundation for Women, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Chicago Public Media to present the Women’s Empowerment Summer Film Series — a free series of screenings highlighting issues facing women in the U.S. and around the world. A 45-minute discussion with representatives from local organizations serving women and girls will follow each screening.

Littlefeather recounts price of native activism
Sacheen Littlefeather, the actor who stood in for Marlon Brando at the 1973 Oscars, says she paid a high price for her criticism of Hollywood portrayals of First Nations people. Littlefeather, now 63, said that act of advocacy cut her acting career short and put her life at risk. She was speaking to TV critics in a promotion for Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian, a Canadian-made documentary that is to air on PBS’s Independent Lens in November.
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Rosie O’Donnell returns to daytime TV on Oprah’s net
Oprah Winfrey announces that Rosie O’Donnell is returning to daytime TV in a talk show (gak) on The Oprah Winfrey Network, in the middle of PBS’s day at Summer TV Press Tour 2010 when, if she’d waited until the next morning, she could have announced it during Discovery’s day at the tour — Discovery being Oprah’s partner in OWN. So instead of listening to Benazir Bhutto’s cousin Mahin Hemmat, and Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani talk about a new PBS Independent Lens project, Bhutto, they were madly typing on their laptops about how the sometimes polarizing Rosie…
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Brando’s 1973 Oscar Stand-in Recounts Fallout
Sacheen Littlefeather says she paid a price when she decried Hollywood’s stereotyped portrayal of American Indians at the 1973 Oscars… She spoke Thursday during a presentation to TV critics on “Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian,” a documentary airing in November on the “Independent Lens” series.
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Tags: ap, cbc news, Chicago Tribune, film screenings, Independent Lens, indie films, ITVS, PBS, public television, Washington Post, women's empowerment

In the News: The Latest on ITVS Programs

“The gutsy television company ITVS, which has embraced alternative distribution models for years, had three documentaries at Sundance this year. I wasn’t able to see Laura Poitras’s The Oath, about a Yemenite family, Al Qaeda, and Guantanamo Bay. My Perestroika offers fascinatingly differing accounts of how several Russian former high school classmates have fared since the collapse of the Soviet Union…”
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“The Bay Area has long been known as a center for documentary filmmaking. … The area is home to the Independent Television Service, a major financer of documentary films, as well as some of the most respected film schools in the country.”
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“Blacking Up is careful to let people speak for themselves, as Clift efficiently segues from scene to scene: a Long Island meeting of the ossifying Al Jolson Society; a trip on a black-owned New York bus tour of hip-hop landmarks, during which white tourists are urged to wear complimentary bling.”
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Priscilla Diaz, the subject of P-Star Rising, discusses the premiere of her film and her new season on PBS’s The Electric Company on WPIX, the flagship station of The CW Television Network.
Watch now >>

Tags: music, New York Times, NPR, Washington Post

In the News: The Latest on ITVS Programs

“ADJUST YOUR COLOR: The Truth of Petey Greene tells the story of the D.C. radio and TV personality who overcame poverty, drug addiction and multiple arrests to take his hometown by storm in the late 1960s (and continuously for 16 years).”
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Host Michael Krasny speaks with filmmaker David Iverson about the upcoming FRONTLINE and ITVS co-production of MY FATHER, MY BROTHER AND ME.
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“In ARUSI PERSIAN WEDDING, the brilliant indie-filmmaker gives people outside of Iran a close and insightful look into the country and its people.”
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“With its gripping story told through interviews with the accused, Coleman, and the police officers, jurors, lawyers, families and activists involved, TULIA, TEXAS takes you from the personal to the political and back again.”
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Filmmaker Cassandra Herrman and Texas criminal defense Attorney Jeff Blackburn discuss the film TULIA, TEXAS, airing Tuesday, Feb. 10 on Independent Lens on PBS.
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Tags: KQED, newspaper reviews, Washington Post