Mountain Lake PBS Productions

Colin Powers reflects on PBS programming for the Adirondacks, Lake Champlain, & Quebec, public broadcasting, and the future of media distribution.

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Entries Tagged as 'Documentary'

Joe Berlinger’s case yields preliminary “wins” for both sides

July 17th, 2010 · No Comments · Documentary, Future of public media, Journalism, News, Public Affairs, Public Media

Both sides have claimed early victories in the case of documentarian Joe Berlinger vs. Chevron over access to the raw footage he shot for his expose “Crude” on Amazonian oil exploitation. I’ve blogged about the case and the filmmaking community reaction here.

On Thursday, the appeals judge ruled that Berlinger must turn over Crude [...]

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Mountain Lake PBS talks up Skatopia – who’d ah thunk it? Tonight at 8:30 – Tomorrow Online

June 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · Documentary, Filmmaking, Local stories, Mountain Lake Journal

 
This Week on EXTRA

June 3rd, 2010 @ 8:30pm
LAKE PLACID FILM FORUM
The Lake Placid Film Forum is celebrating 10-years, with special guests including actors Hal Holbrook, Parker Posey, and authors William Kennedy and Jay Parini. The festival host screenings of 2 locally produced films, The Summers of Walter Hacks by Vermont filmmaker George [...]

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CPB/PBS Producer’s Academy Take 1 – Gaming a social issue Doc

May 23rd, 2010 · No Comments · Documentary, Filmmaking, Multi-media, PBS, Public Media

I’m thrilled to have been selected to attend the 25 person “CPB/PBS Producer’s Academy” at WGBH in Boston in late June. As students we have already been assigned quite a bit of homework and have learned who are classmates are. A very accomplished lot!
Here is a short video about the most recent work of Chelo [...]

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Intentional “postage stamping”

May 23rd, 2010 · No Comments · Digital Television, Documentary, Filmmaking, High Definition

Throughout the ongoing transition from analog to digital broadcasting, we’ve struggled with the multiple formats that our servers, sat receivers and master control equipment have to contend with.
One of the worst developments is to find 4:3  (original TV ratio) programs showing up “postage stamped” with black bars at the sides AND the top and bottom. [...]

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Lobby group wants to make docs a priority for Public Television

May 13th, 2010 · No Comments · Documentary, Filmmaking, Future of public media, Multi-media, PBS

This group is looking worldwide, but I wonder how PBS might respond to this group’s plea.

Lobby group wants to make docs a priority for PSBs

by Kelly Anderson
At the recent Hot Docs festival, MercuryMedia CEO Tim Sparke took the opportunity to announce the launch of the Documentary Distributors’ Association, a group [...]

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Judge Rules That Filmmaker Must Give Footage to Chevron

May 12th, 2010 · No Comments · Documentary, Journalism, Multi-media, Public Affairs, Public Media

This ruling represents a shocking setback for investigative documentary journalism. The IDA and filmmaker Patrick Creadon (I.O.U.S.A., Wordplay) are circulating an open letter to show suport for freedom of the press. More info to come in this space about how to sign on to the letter.

Juan Diego Pérez/Entendre Films An Ecuadorean cancer [...]

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Pitch Perfect at the Toronto Documentary Forum

May 10th, 2010 · No Comments · Documentary, Filmmaking

Dispatch from Toronto | Hot Docs ’10: Pitch Perfect at the Toronto Documentary Forum
by Basil Tsiokos (May 7, 2010)

The scene at the Toronto Documentary Forum. Photo courtesy of Hot Docs/Joseph Michael.

Hundreds of broadcasters, funders, filmmakers, and other observers convened this Wednesday and Thursday morning for the Toronto Documentary Forum, North America’s largest documentary market, [...]

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PBS Revolution Discussion Continued…

May 5th, 2010 · No Comments · Digital Television, Documentary, Educational Programming, Future of public media, Local stories, Mountain Lake Journal, Multi-media, News, PBS, Public Affairs, Uncategorized

Below is a thread that began several weeks ago (as reported here and here) on Revolution PBS, an anonymous blog. I’m picking up the thread mid-stream. If you haven’t seen the beginning, you can start with my post linked above and then the “Spoonful of Sugar” post picked up here.

I’ve added my comments [...]

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Secrets of the Dead: Japanese Super Sub Tomorrow Night on Mountain Lake PBS

May 4th, 2010 · No Comments · Documentary, Filmmaking, History, PBS

The Japanese I-400 Class Submarine was an underwater aircraft carrier — a top-secret weapon so potent that it very nearly changed the course of the war. JAPANESE SUPER SUB answers many questions that still surround this unusual weapon: How did the Japanese create this technological marvel? How dangerous was it? Could it really have changed [...]

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Tribeca Film Fest takes its movies to Video on Demand

April 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Documentary, Filmmaking, Multi-media

Tribeca looks to expand notion of film festival
By JAKE COYLE (AP) – 6 days ago
NEW YORK — When British director Mat Whitecross was growing up in Oxford, only so many movies screened in his local cinema — and not the intriguing movies he read about playing at film festivals or elsewhere.
Whitecross estimates [...]

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