LPB Brings ‘TV Worth Watching’ to the National PBS Schedule

Four Co-Productions to Broadcast Starting This Spring  

Los Angeles, CA (March 25, 2004) Latino Public Broadcasting (www.lpbp.org) “TV Worth Watching” presents the broadcast of four co-productions scheduled to air beginning on March 29 through June, The New Americans, Every Child is Born a Poet: The Life and Work of Piri Thomas, My Journey Home and Farmingville. LPB Executive Director, Luca Bentivoglio made the announcement.

"We are proud to present a line up of award-winning projects that document the social conscious of our changing society," comments Bentivoglio. "These projects are representative of over twenty hours of programming that LPB has planned for public television this year."

The four projects are listed below in order of air date (Check local listings).

The New Americans

Available on PBS the (ITVS) Independent Lens series on March 29, 30, and 31, 2004

Producer: Gita Saedi

Genre: Documentary series

7 Episodes/60 Minutes

The New Americans is a documentary series that interweaves stories of contemporary immigrants and refugees, following them from the homelands and refugee camps to their first pivotal years in America. In Hardball Dreams we will follow the story of two Dominican baseball players, Ricardo and Jose, from the Dodgers camp in Santo Domingo to spring training in Florida and through their first years in America playing professional baseball in places as far-flung and overwhelmingly white as Great Falls, Montana. In Kansas Stories we will learn about two meatpacking families and their struggle to reunite with their children – the Flores, originally from Guanajuato, Mexico, and the Caos, refugees from Vietnam.

Every Child is Born a Poet: The Life and Work of Piri Thomas

Available on PBS on the (ITVS) Independent Lens series on April 6

Producer: Jonathan Robinson

Genre: Documentary

1 Episode/60 Minutes

An incendiary mix of documentary, poetry, storytelling, drama, and performance, Every Child is Born a Poet explores the life and work of Piri Thomas, the 75 year-old Afro-Cuban-Puerto Rican author of the classic autobiographical novel Down These Mean Streets (1967). The film traces Thomas' path from childhood to manhood in New York City’s Spanish Harlem, El Barrio, from the 1930's through the 1960’s: his parents' immigrant experience, home life during the Great Depression, membership in barrio youth gangs, his struggle to come to terms with his mixed-racial identity, travels as a teen-age merchant marine, his heroin addiction, his notorious armed robbery of a Greenwich Village nightclub, his six years spent in prison, and his emergence as a writer.

Thomas' coming-of age story is counter-pointed with verité scenes of his on-going work of forty-five years as an educator and activist empowering marginalized and incarcerated youths. A stylized, genre-spanning production, Every Child is Born a Poet includes rare archival footage & still photographs and provocative mixed-media artwork, as it examines Thomas' use of creative expression as a means of confronting poverty, racism, violence and isolation. Pulsating with an original Latin Jazz score, Every Child is Born a Poet is a riveting portrait of a life lived through struggle, self-discovery, and transformation. The documentary is winner of the Opera Prima Award at the 2003 Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival, Honorable Mention at the UrbanWorld Film Festival, and nominee for Distinguished Documentary Feature by the International Documentary Association (IDA).

My Journey Home

Available on PBS April 7, 2004

Producer: Jeff Beiber

Genre: Documentary

1 Episode/120 Minutes

My Journey Home traverses the conflicted, cultural landscape of the United States, through the perspective of new American voices known and unknown – writer Faith Adiele, journalist Andrew Lam, and Armando and Carlos Peña, two brothers from an ordinary family that has weathered extraordinary times. In a feature length, two-hour documentary, we will follow their journeys home as they try to come to grips with the America of their past and future. On the road in this country and beyond, Lam, Adiele and the Peña brothers will encounter a nation transformed. It is not the old America of homogeneity and fixed boundaries, but a new global society of suburban Little Saigons, Mexican and Korean communities in the middle of the Great Plains, and cities where Islam and Buddhism are the fastest growing religions. At the heart of each story will be the drama of a personal search, revealing biographies that are provoking, humorous and emotionally devastating.

Farmingville

Available on PBS' P.O.V./ American Documentary series on June 22 at 10pm

Producers: Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini

Genre: Documentary

1 Episode/ 78 minutes

Farmingville documents the shocking hate-based attempted murders of two Mexican day laborers catapult a small Long Island town into national headlines, unmasking a new frontline in the border wars: suburbia.  For nearly a year, Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini lived and worked in Farmingville, New York, so they could capture first-hand the stories of residents, day laborers and activists on all sides of the debate.  This timely and powerful film is more than a story about illegal immigration. Ultimately it challenges viewers to ask what the ‘American dream’ really means.  The film is winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, the Premio Mesquite Long Documentary Award from CineFestival in San Antonio, and Best Documentary Feature from the San Diego Latino Film Festival.