Blog

May 25, 2011

Women and Girls Lead Featured at PBS Annual Meeting

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We kicked it off with Bhutto two weeks ago, and last week the PBS family assembled in Orlando, Florida and discussed the ITVS initiative Women and Girls Lead. Check out…...

May 20, 2011

Shelbyville Director Tackles Race, Immigration, and What it Means to Be American

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Kim A. Snyder is an award-winning filmmaker who has made more than a dozen shorts and two feature documentaries. Her latest film, Welcome To Shelbyville. In 2007, Kim co-founded the…...

May 18, 2011

Ethnobiology Enthusiast Filmmaker versus MOTHRA!

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We caught up with Jessica Oreck, the director of Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, to talk about her maiden voyage into documentary filmmaking. For a young woman who spent a lifetime…...

May 06, 2011

The Danger and Pathos of Shooting the BHUTTO Doc

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The day after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, political consultant and film producer and director Duane Baughman was on the phone with his colleague Mark Siegel, who had…...

May 05, 2011

Behind Independent Lens: Fighting for Diverse Public Media

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We get the questions often enough here at Independent Lens about PBS, the federal budget, and the idea of publicly funded media in general. Many of our viewers probably aren't…...

May 04, 2011

Ever Have a Teacher Who Changed Your Life?

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Teachers -- often overworked, frequently underappreciated, sometimes demonized, usually meagerly compensated. But all of us have had teachers who helped us grow up and make sense of the world, and…...

April 27, 2011

Viewer Tracy Chiles McGhee is One Inspired Woman

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During Women's History Month, we aired a number of documentaries featuring incredibly smart, brave, and talented women including Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai (Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari…...

Director Jeff Malmberg and Mark Hogancamp with their Marwencol alter egos. (Photo by Chris Shellen)
Interviews

April 25, 2011

Marwencol Director Reflects on a Man, His Dolls, and the Touch of Genius

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Jeff Malmberg, director of Marwencol, took on much more than just a film project when he decided to shoot a documentary about Mark Hogancamp. Intrigued by a magazine article about…...

April 12, 2011

For Your Tuesday: Basquiat, and a Live Chat with Our Artists Month Filmmakers

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In celebration of Artists Month, we are hosting a live chat today in collaboration with PBS NewsHour's Art Beat and ITVS. Join us RIGHT HERE for a discussion about creativity,…...

April 09, 2011

Mikey Welsh Trades Rock ‘n’ Roll Stardom for Outsider Art

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Mikey Welsh is a painter living in Burlington, Vermont. He worked in collage and watercolors until the age of 19, when he began his music career. By the age of…...

April 08, 2011

Hollywood Multitasker Tamra Davis Remembers Her Friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat

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Director Tamra Davis is hardly an "outsider artist." She is a well-known Hollywood director of music videos (with Sonic Youth, Hanson, Depeche Mode, Cher, and many more), feature films (including…...

April 02, 2011

Unearthing the Miraculous in a Far Away Land

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Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev discovered a book at a flea market in Moscow about Russian avant-garde art that miraculously survived Soviet censorship. That chance encounter led to many years…...