Tag Archives: world channel

ITVS Honored at the 72nd Annual Peabody Awards

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Summer Pasture and the Why Poverty? series were among the programs honored on Monday at the George Foster Peabody Awards in New York City. Administered by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Peabody is one of the most prestigious honors in electronic media.

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The 72nd Annual Peabody Award Luncheon on Monday, May 20, 2013. Courtesy of Lois Vossen.

Summer Pasture and two of the documentaries from the Why Poverty? series, ITVS-funded Park Avenue and Solar Mamas, aired on Independent Lens in 2012, representing the only PBS programming to be recognized at this year’s ceremony. Independent Lens Senior Series Producer Lois Vossen attended the luncheon and accepted the Summer Pasture award on behalf of the filmmakers, who were unable to attend:

“It was an honor to attend the Peabody Awards to accept a Peabody on behalf of Lynn True, Nelson Walker, and Tsering Perlo for their beautiful film Summer Pasture. Independent Lens was also awarded a Peabody for Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream and Solar Mamas, which broadcast as part of the Why Poverty? series. Winning PBS’s two Peabody Awards this year is further indication of the extraordinary and extraordinarily important work independent filmmakers do. Their unyielding passion and commitment to journalism makes them a vital part of public television. We need their voices now more than ever. It also didn’t hurt that Judd Apatow told me today how much he loves Independent Lens and that it is one of his favorite series!” Continue reading →

Two ITVS Programs Win Peabody Awards

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Summer Pasture and the Why Poverty? series were among the ITVS programs to earn the George Foster Peabody Awards this year. Administered by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, the Peabody is one of the most prestigious honors in electronic media.

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Congratulations to the filmmakers on this incredible achievement! This brings the total of Peabody awards for ITVS films to 24.

Summer Pasture, an Independent Lens program, is the unique love story of Locho and Yama, nomadic herders in Tibet faced with a difficult choice as their way of life begins to give way to the modern world.

Why Poverty? is a collection of eight films, co-productions of ITVS and STEPS International, that are part of a global cross-media project aimed at raising awareness of poverty in America and around the world.

The Peabody Awards will be presented May 20, 2013 at a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City with Scott Pelley, anchor of The CBS Evening News, as this year’s emcee.

Dinner with the President, Sunday on Global Voices

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Dinner with the President: A Nation’s Journey by Sabiha Sumar airs Sunday, October 28 on Global Voices on the WORLD Channel.

Dictator or liberator? General or president? Pakistani filmmaker Sabiha Sumar sits down with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, prior to his resignation, to find answers. In an intimate and hard-hitting interview, the former president discusses his vision for the future of Pakistan and its people, and reveals childhood stories that have shaped his life.

Dinner with the President: A Nation’s Journey will air as part of the Global Voices series on the WORLD Channel, Sunday, October 28 at 10 p.m. (check local listings). Starting October 29, the documentary will be available to view in entirety online via PBS Video (for a limited time only).

Street Ballad: A Jakarta Story, Sunday on Global Voices

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On Sunday, Global Voices brings you Street Ballad: A Jakarta Story by first time filmmaker Daniel Ziv, who provided BTB with this inside look on the motivation behind his documentary. The film airs Sunday, October 21 on the WORLD Channel (check local listings).

Street Ballad: A Jakarta Story is my first film. I was drawn to the unusual tale behind it not because of any ambition to become a filmmaker or the quest to find a ‘good topic’ for a documentary, but because one day on the streets of Jakarta, Indonesia, I stumbled across a gang of unique individuals whose amazing life story I could not ignore.

Street buskers: disaffected yet spirited youngsters who navigate Jakarta’s crowded buses and polluted streets, croon songs that spell out their life stories and challenge the powers that be. Marginalized youngsters working hard for enough loose change to get them through another week, never turning to crime, unemployment, or despair.

I was drawn into their world and as I spent more time with them, I realized their tale deserved to be told. I also recognized that it was a story with the potential to fascinate and charm audiences as much as it captivated me. Although I wasn’t yet a filmmaker, it was a story that happened to contain everything a documentary filmmaker could ask for: contagious personalities, compelling social justice issues, individual struggles that shed light on universal problems, a colorful urban sub-culture and – as an added bonus – a built-in soundtrack of wonderful original music. Continue reading →

The Collaborator and His Family, Sunday on Global Voices

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ITVS’s Annisa Kau sat down with filmmakers Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash to discuss their documentary The Collaborator and His Family. The film, which follows a Palestinian family as it is torn apart by its patriarch’s collaboration with Israel, will air this Sunday, August 5 on Global Voices on the WORLD Channel (check local listings).

Can you tell us about your background and what led you to Ibrahim’s family and this project?

Since we began our documentary careers, our main focus has dealt with human rights and people’s pursuit of liberty.

One of the key elements of Israel’s security defense system is the use of collaborators, or informants, so we had been aware of the subject. While filming our 2004 film GARDEN, we came across many collaborators and their families on the dark streets of southern Tel Aviv, where junkies and prostitutes lived. Continue reading →

Arusi Persian Wedding, Sunday on Global Voices

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The documentary Arusi Persian Wedding by Marjan Tehrani airs Sunday, July 22 on Global Voices on the WORLD Channel.

The film explores the history of U.S.-Iran relations through the prism of Iranian-American Alex Tehrani and his bride Heather, who travel to Iran for a traditional Persian wedding. Accompanying them are his sister Marjan, the film’s director.

Watch the trailer after the jump. Continue reading →

Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors, Sunday on Global Voices

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By Annisa Kau
Broadcast & Distribution Coordinator, ITVS

ITVS’s Annisa Kau caught up with Andes Plane Crash Survivors Nando Parrado, Jose Luis Inciarte, and Adolfo Strauch to discuss their documentary on the 40th anniversary of the crash. Stranded will air on Sunday, July 8 on Global Voices on the World Channel (check listings).

On Friday, October 13, in 1972, charter flight 571 took off from Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital city, carrying a boisterous team of wealthy college athletes to a rugby match in Chile. But what was supposed to be a first taste of freedom away from home turned out to be a much scarier and life-altering journey.

Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors is the tale of flight 571, which never made it to Chile. Instead, the plane crash-landed in a desolate glacial valley, high in the Andean cordillera — a chain of rugged, snow-covered peaks stretching from Bogata, Colombia to Punta Arenas, Chile. Fifteen people died, including the pilot. Five were badly wounded. But — miracle of miracles — 29 lived. Continue reading →

Putin’s Kiss, Sunday on Global Voices

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The ITVS-funded documentary Putin’s Kiss by Lise Birk Pedersen airs Sunday, July 1 on Global Voices on the WORLD Channel.

Nashi is an increasingly popular political youth organization in Russia with direct ties to the Kremlin. Officially, its goal is to support the current political system by creating a future elite among the brightest and most loyal Russian teenagers. But the organization also works to prevent the political opposition from spreading their views among young people. 16-year-old Masha Drokova, a Nashi commissar and spokesperson, is an ambitious middle-class student from the outskirts of Moscow. After joining Nashi at the age of 15, she moves to the very top of the organization, and is rewarded for her dedication with a university scholarship, an apartment, and even a pro-Putin talk show.

Everything changes when Drokova becomes acquainted with a group of liberal journalists, including popular anti-Putin reporter Oleg Kashin. At first, she remains devoted to Nashi while pursuing tentative friendships with its left-wing critics — but when Kashin is brutally beaten by “unknown perpetrators,” she has a genuine change of heart and decides to take a stand.

Watch a clip of the documentary after the jump. Continue reading →

The Day My God Died, Sunday on Global Voices

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The ITVS-funded documentary by Andrew Levine airs Sunday, June 24 on Global Voices on the WORLD Channel.

Narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins, The Day My God Died lifts the veil of secrecy on the sex trafficking of Nepali children in India using footage from the brothels captured with spy camera technology. The film tells the stories of Gina, sold into sexual slavery at age 7, raped by 14 men, and beaten with sticks and aluminum rods; Anita, lured by a friend, then drugged and sold to a brothel at age 12, where she was beaten and threatened with being buried alive; Maili, trafficked at age 19, along with her infant daughter who was seized and used as “insurance” to keep Maili from fleeing; and Jyoti, sold at age 12, raped, choked, and forced to drink alcohol to break down her resistance.

Watch the trailer after the jump. Continue reading →

Town of Runners: An Update From the Filmmaker

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by Jerry Rothwell
Director of Town of Runners

Town of Runners is a documentary about Ethiopian runners who hope to change their lives by becoming professional athletes. The film is set in Bekoji, Ethiopia, a small remote town in the Southern Highlands known for producing some of the world’s greatest runners, largely due to the dedication of Coach Sentayehu Eshetu. The ITVS-funded documentary by Jerry Rothwell premieres Sunday, June 17 on Global Voices on the WORLD Channel. 

Filmmaker Jerry Rothwell in Bekoji

We finished shooting Town of Runners during Spring 2011 and in November of that year, I took a rough cut of the film back to Ethiopia to view it with Coach Sentayehu, Hawii, Alemi, Biruk, and their families. For Alemi’s mother, it was the first time she’d seen her daughter run, and the film gave Hawii’s family a sense of the struggles she’d had over the past few years in the running clubs.

Since the film ended, Hawii’s second club, Assela, had managed to find its way out of its financial difficulties. Hawii rejoined it, regained her fitness, and has been competing and doing well in races across the Oromia region.

Alemi, meanwhile, decided she wanted to leave her club in Holeta and return home to Bekoji once her two-year contract was up.  She came home to live with her parents and began training once again with Coach Sentayehu. It was a chance for her to pick up her education after a two-year break.

Bethlehem (Betty) and Freya, the two girls who went with Hawii to the club in Woliso, finally ran away and returned to Bekoji.  By the time they left, they said 50 of the club’s 52 athletes had done the same due to the lack of facilities and training. Meanwhile, Bekoji had managed to establish its own club, with the help of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation and Betty won a place there. Freya has given up athletics and has returned to school in Bekoji. Continue reading →