Not everyone is a Ken Burns fan.  The El Paso Defenders of Honor are sponsoring a protest against Burns, claiming he doesn’t include enough Latinos in his documentaries. Ken Burns, who’s produced landmark documentaries like The Civil War, Baseball, and World War II for PBS, is in El Paso to promote his newest project “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.”

“Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature’s most spectacular locales – from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska – The National Parks: America’s Best Idea is nonetheless a story of people: people from every conceivable background – rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy. It is a story full of struggle and conflict, high ideals and crass opportunism, stirring adventure and enduring inspiration – set against the most breathtaking backdrops imaginable.” [PBS]

images via thesca

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A civil war has been raging for more than 40 years. This war has taken more than 15,000 lives, and it passes its legacy from father to son. The battlefield is South Central Los Angeles, an area surrounded by geographical icons of California — Rodeo Drive, Hollywood and Vine, the beaches of Santa Monica, and Disneyland.

Filmmaker Stacy Peralta hits the streets of South Central Los Angeles to find out, whats behind this war in the documentary “CRIPS AND BLOODS: Made in America,” and in so doing, speaks with former and current members of the Bloods and the Crips, two of the most notorious and violent street gangs in America.

Narrated by Forest Whitaker and produced by Cash Warren and Los Angeles NBA star Baron Davis, the acclaimed documentary “CRIPS AND BLOODS: Made in America”will premiere on the PBS series “Independent Lens,” hosted by Terrence Howard, on Tuesday, May 12, 2009, at 10 PM.

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General Motors Corp. will stop bankrolling movies made by PBS filmmaker Ken Burns as it tries to conserve cash and survive the worst sales market in 27 years.

GM, which is in danger of running out of money this month and has asked for as much as $30 billion in federal aid, is curtailing corporate sponsorships and slashing marketing expenses.

The cash crunch ends a 22-year relationship between GM and Burns. Under a 10-year deal that started in 1999, GM paid for 35 percent of each film’s budget and funded educational outreach programs tied to each documentary.  [via]

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The documentary film”Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway,” airs nationwide Dec. 23 on PBS-TV on the Emmy Award-winning program “Independent Lens.”

It was no secret in the tony East Hamptons enclave that the two reclusive women living together in gothic squalor, with dozens of cats and the occasional raccoon, shared an intimate connection with one of the wealthiest and most celebrated women of her day.

But it wasn’t until documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles captured their story in the seminal 1975 cult classic Grey Gardens that the rest of the world discovered the truth: the elderly recluse and her eccentric, spinster daughter, who performed for their own private muses amongst the cobwebs, were Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale and Edith Bouvier Beale-aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.

Grey Gardens, the Tony award-winning Broadway musical, was developed three decades after the Maysles film debuted. The musical is the ultimate homage to the quirky and rebellious Beales. Edith Beale and her daughter Eddie turned their backs on their upbringing, public opinion and polite society to pursue their artistic dreams in the sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking and always sentimental fantasy world they shared together.

GREY GARDENS: From East Hampton to Broadway picks up the thread of this compelling mother-daughter story, weaving together clips from the Maysles brothers’ film with insightful interviews featuring Albert Maysles, societal and cultural commentators and the creators of the Broadway show. The documentary is a backstage pass into the creative process that brought one of America’s most haunted and haunting families from an original cult movie to the Great White Way. [via]

The original trailer

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More than a century after she became the first woman to run for president, the controversial and colorful Victoria Woodhull is chronicled in a compelling documentary produced by Victoria Weston and is available to individuals and libraries free for the holidays

“America’s Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull,” a feature length documentary previously featured on PBS television is now available for free. Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to campaign for U.S. President in 1872. “America’s Victoria” is a wonderful chronicle of the life of one of the most important and unrecognized women in U.S. history. “If you spliced the genes of Hillary Clinton, Madonna, Heidi Fleiss and Margaret Thatcher, you might have someone like Victoria Woodhull,” wrote the Atlanta Journal & Constitution.

Although she was a radical suffragist, Victoria Woodhull refused to restrict her Presidential campaign to the issue of women’s suffrage. Instead, she advocated a single sexual standard for men and women, legalization of prostitution and reform of marriage. “America’s Victoria” combines rare archival images, Woodhull’s own words performed by Kate Capshaw and illuminating interviews with contemporary feminist Gloria Steinem to present a fascinating portrait of this remarkably brave woman.

“Ahead of her time, Victoria Woodhull was an advocate not only of women’s suffrage but of legalized prostitution and free love, by which she meant a commitment untrammeled by governmental regulations. She ran for president four times and generally lived a life unimagined by most people. She was an electrifying woman who teaches women to be daring, courageous and outrageous,” says Victoria Weston.
For more information about on how to acquire a free DVD of “America’s Victoria, Remembering Victoria Woodhull”: www.ZoieFilms.com/homevideo.html

[via]

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Finding Billy (pictured above in the Broadway musical), a new documentary on the casting of the Broadway musical Billy Elliot will debut on WNET/Channel 13 on Monday, December 1 at 8pm. The program will offer a behind-the-scenes look at the nationwide search for the three actors who play the lead role in Billy Elliot the Musical on Broadway.

Based on the 2000 British film (pictured above) of the same name, the show tells the tale of a young boy with a dream of being a dancer.

Against the background of an increasingly bitter miners’ strike that his elder brother and father are involved in, young Billy Elliot finds he prefers joining in the girls’ ballet class at the local hall to the boxing he’s there for. The ballet mistress soon realises he has real potential, but no-one, least of all his family, is likely to go along with a lad doing dancing. [IMDB]

[via]

Movie Trailer via Youtube

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