PBS World to Launch New ITVS Series

SAN FRANCISCO, February 6:
This March, the digital channel PBS World will debut Global Voices, a new 26-part documentary series produced by ITVS
International.

The rollout of Global
Voices on Sunday, March 30 at 10
p.m. marks the first original
series to launch on PBS World. In addition to the PBS World broadcast, the
series will be available online via distribution platforms such as Joost,
YouTube, BitTorrent and iTunes.

Global Voices will feature the U.S. premieres of five
documentaries funded by ITVS International, as well as encore broadcasts of
other ITVS programs. The series kicks off with the U.S. broadcast premiere of
the documentary Circus School,
revealing the challenges faced by a group of Chinese children on their journey
to become acrobats. Other documentary premieres in the series include Bridge
Over the Wadi, which follows 50
Arab and 50 Jewish children as they attend a bi-national and bilingual grade
school in Wadi Ara village in Israel for the first time; ABC Colombia, a portrait of a small rural Colombian community
controlled by paramilitary forces; Overbooked, which profiles two men from two different
cultures as they try to manage a diverse group of people traveling from Torino,
Italy to Morocco; and For God, Tsar and Fatherland, the winner of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival
World Cinema Directing Award.

“The launch of this new
series is another major step in fulfilling the pledge of ITVS International and
our Global Perspectives Project
to bring untold stories from every corner of the world to the broadest possible
U.S audience,” said Sally Fifer, the president and CEO of ITVS. “Having this
new series air on PBS’s World Channel underscores ITVS’s commitment to public
media and our longstanding relationship with PBS.”

Added John F. Wilson, PBS’s
senior VP and chief TV programming executive, “PBS has a commitment to bring
diverse voices with new perspectives to American audiences and we are delighted
to expand the programming on PBS World with the wealth of international content
provided by the Global Voices
series.”

ITVS International is a
division of the Independent Television Service that promotes an international
exchange of documentary films made by independent producers, bringing
international voices to U.S. audiences and American stories to audiences
abroad.

PBS World is a new channel
featuring documentary, public affairs, and news programming from public
television’s award-winning signature series and independent filmmakers. The
channel is produced and distributed by PBS, WGBH Boston and Thirteen/WNET New
York, in association with American Public Television (APT) and the National
Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA).

—By Irene Lew