Community Cinema

About Community Cinema
ITVS Community is the national community engagement program of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and the Emmy® Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens. Through Community Engagement Campaigns in support of groundbreaking, independent films, our innovative educational product ITVS Community Classroom and our flagship community outreach program Community Cinema, ITVS Community works to bring communities together and connect them with information, resources, and opportunities for education, engagement, and positive change. ITVS Community builds on our 20-year legacy of community engagement activities and makes public broadcasting into a powerful resource for individuals, communities, and organizations working on key social issues around the country. For a complete lineup or more information about the Community Cinema series visit: http://communitycinema.org/

SEPTEMBER 2012 - HALF THE SKY: TURNING OPPRESSION INTO OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN WORLDWIDE by Maro Chermayeff, Jamie Gordon, Mikaela Beardsley A landmark series based on the book by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky follows celebrity activists America Ferrera, Diane Lane, Eva Mendes, Meg Ryan, Gabrielle Union, and Olivia Wilde as they travel through six countries to meet inspiring, courageous individuals confronting oppression and developing real, meaningful solutions for women and girls through health care, education, and economic empowerment.

OCTOBER 2012 - AS GOES JANESVILLE by Brad Lichtenstein America's middle class is dwindling, and the debate over how to save it is nowhere fiercer than in the normally tranquil state of Wisconsin. In Janesville, as jobs disappear and families are stretched to their breaking point, citizens and politicians are embroiled in an ideological battle about how to turn things around.

NOVEMBER 2012 - SOLAR MAMAS by Jehane Noujaim Rafea — a 30-year-old Jordanian mother of four — is traveling outside of her village for the first time to attend a solar engineering program at India’s Barefoot College. She will join other poor women from Guatemala, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Colombia in learning concrete skills to create change in their communities.

JANUARY 2013 - SOUL FOOD JUNKIES by Byron Hurt Soul food lies at the heart of African American cultural identity. The black community’s love affair with soul food is deep-rooted, complex, and in some cases, deadly. Soul Food Junkies puts this culinary tradition under the microscope to examine both its significance and its consequences.

FEBRUARY 2013 - THE POWERBROKER by Bonnie Boswell Whitney M. Young, Jr. was one of the most celebrated and controversial leaders of the civil rights era. As executive director of the National Urban League, he took the struggle for equality directly to the powerful white elite, gaining allies in business and government, including three presidents.

MARCH 2013 - WONDER WOMEN! THE UNTOLD STORY OF AMERICAN SUPERHEROINES by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan Trace the fascinating evolution and legacy of the original comic book Amazon, Wonder Woman. From her creation in the 1940s to the superhero blockbusters of today, pop culture’s representations of powerful women often reflect society’s anxieties about women’s liberation.

APRIL 2013 - THE ISLAND PRESIDENT
 by Jon Shenk, Bonni Cohen, and Richard Berge Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed is confronting a problem greater than any world leader has ever faced — the literal survival of his country and everyone in it. His is the most low-lying country in the world; a minor rise in sea level would literally erase it from the map.

MAY 2013 - THE REVOLUTIONARY OPTIMISTS 
 by Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen Amlan Ganguly teaches the children of Kolkata’s slums to become leaders in improving their own community’s health and sanitation. Using street theater, dance, and data as their weapons, the children have cut malaria and diarrhea rates in half, increased polio vaccination rates, and turned garbage dumps into playing fields.

JUNE 2013 - LOVE FREE OR DIE by Macky Alston Love Free or Die is about a man who has two defining passions that the world cannot reconcile: his love for God and for his partner Mark. The film is about church and state, love and marriage, faith and identity — and openly gay Bishop Eugene Robinson's struggle to dispel the notion that God’s love has limits.