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Makers #206 “Women in War”

In this episode of MAKERS, follow the history of American women’s participation in war — from Vietnam to the present — as nurses, soldiers, journalists, diplomats and spies. Featured stories include those of Linda Bray (pictured left), the first woman to lead troops into battle, and Valerie Plame Wilson, whose career was sabotaged after she was “outed” as a high-level spy. MAKERS: Women in Warshares the stories of military leaders who have broken through gender barriers.

Airs on WXXI-WORLD March 26, 2018 at 8:00 pm and March 27, 2018 at 9:00 am and 3:00 pm
Airs on WXXI April 9, 2018 at 3:00 am (1 hour long)
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Makers #204 “Women in Politics”

View profiles of women in public office who were “firsts” in their fields. From the first woman elected to Congress in 1916 to a young woman running for Detroit City Council in 2013, the documentary explores the challenges confronting American women in politics.

Trailblazing leaders like Hillary Clinton, Senator Barbara Mikulski, Olympia Snowe, the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the House of Representatives, and Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to serve in Congress, provide a backdrop for younger women like Rashida Tlaib, the first Muslim-American woman elected to the Michigan House, and Raquel Castaneda-Lopez, who chronicles her run for Detroit City council. Today’s leaders in Washington, including Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the first female senator from Massachusetts, Susan Collins (R-ME), who led the Senate in shaping a deal to end the government shutdown, and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), currently the youngest woman serving in Congress, are also represented.

Airs on WXXI March 26, 2018 at 3:00 am (1 hour long)
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Healed: Music, Medicine and Life with MS

Renowned cornet virtuoso Jim Klages, at the height of his career, noticed a tingling in his arm, nearly dropping his cornet. The diagnosis: multiple sclerosis. Through verite and archival footage, interviews, and music recordings, Healed takes viewers into one artist’s world of infirmity, hope and determination and illuminates how the creative spirit adapts not only to survive, but to thrive.

Airs on WXXI-HD March 25, 2018 at 7:00 pm (1 hour long)
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The Rise and Fall of the Brown Buffalo

The rise and fall of the Brown Buffalo is an innovative look into the life of radical Chicano lawyer, author, and countercultural icon, Oscar Zeta Acosta – best known for his volatile friendship with legendary journalist-provocateur, Hunter S. Thompson. The author of two ground breaking autobiographical novels, Acosta’s powerful literary voice, brash courtroom style and notorious revolutionary antics made him a revered figure within the Chicano movement, and offered one of the most brazen, frontal assaults on white supremacy seen at the time. Yet in hindsight, Acosta is more known as Thompson’s bumbling Samoan sidekick in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas than for his own work exposing racial bias, hypocrisy, and repression within the California justice system.

This film sets out to right this historical wrong, giving Acosta his due place as an imperfect, but larger-than-life figure in American history. Channeling the spirit of the psychedelic 60s and the joyful irreverence of Gonzo journalism, the film also shows Acosta’s personal and creative evolution play out against the backdrop of a society in turmoil. From his origins in segregated rural California, to his stint as a Baptist missionary in Panama, his radicalization in the Chicano movement of the 60s, to his mysterious disappearance in Mexico in 1974, director Phillip Rodriguez offers us a complex figure emblematic of a generation. Relevant now more than ever, this untold story probes issues of racial identity, criminal justice, and media representation , while revealing the personal story of a troubled and brilliant man coming to terms with his identity and finding meaning in the struggles of his people.

Airs on WXXI-TV March 23, 2018 at 9:00 pm (1 hours long)
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1964: The Fight for a Right

By the mid twentieth century, Mississippi’s African Americans had suffered from nearly 75 years of slavery by another name – Jim Crow discrimination. In 1964 in Mississippi, people died in an effort to force the state to allow African Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote. Although the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer has passed, the struggle for voting rights is still pertinent. According to the NAACP, states have recently passed the most laws limiting voter participation since Jim Crow. Moreover, these laws also disenfranchise other people of color, the elderly, poor, and disabled.

With historical footage and interviews with Freedom Summer architects and volunteers, as well as present day activists, 1964: THE FIGHT FOR A RIGHT uses Mississippi to explain American voting issues in the last 150 years. For instance, why are red states red?

Airs on WXXI-TV March 21, 2018 at 3:00 am (1 hour long)
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Conquistidor with Michael Wood (2 of 4)

Six years after the fall of Mexico, the conquistador Francisco Pizarro, exploring south of the equator, uncovers another civilization unknown to the European world: the empire of the Incas, which extended 3,000 miles from Ecuador to Chile. Michael Wood recounts Pizarro’s daring march into Peru with fewer than 200 men and tells the almost incredible tale of his capture of the Inca Atuahuallpa and his promise to ransom himself with a roomful of gold. Traveling across the Peruvian desert along ancient Inca roads, Wood climbs the Andes with a train of llamas, continues to the ancient city of Cuzco, the Incas’ “navel of the earth,” where massive Inca buildings still stand, and to the stupendous Sacred Valley ruins, including Macchu Picchu. Telling the story of the Inca resistance, and using Inca accounts discovered only in modern times, Wood journeys on over the passes of the high Andes, up 17,000-foot glaciers and finally down into tropical rainforests on an epic trek to the lost city of the Incas, their last refuge, at Vilcabamba, which was identified only 30 years ago.

Airs on WXXI May 20, 2018 at 2:00 am (1 hour long)
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Museum Access #103

Join Leslie Mueller in America’s largest art museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Learn about this amazing 2 million sq. ft. museum that houses 5,000 years of world history, perched atop 5th avenue in New York City. Explore the centerpiece of the Egyptian Art Collection, the Temple of Dendur and get a peek at how this important piece of Egyptian history was carefully cleaned by museum curators. Then learn about the mystery that surrounds the most powerful female in ancient Egypt, Pharoh Hatshepsut.

Airs on WXXI March 20, 2018 at 1:00 am (1/2 hour long)
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Searching for Augusta: The Forgotten Angel of Bastogne

Tells the little-known story of Augusta Chiwy, a black nurse, and her heroic service at a U.S. military aid station during the opening days of the Battle of the Bulge. Her remarkable story of bravery went untold for over 60 years, until historian and author Martin King tracked her down and wrote a book celebrating her heroism. August Chiwy passed away on August 23, 2015 in Belgium at the age of 94. Her life story was celebrated in the New York Times feature series “The Lives They Lived.” Using archival footage and photos, black and white sketches, and interviews with author Martin King, historian Michael Collins, and others, the documentary pieces together the remarkable true story of this previously unsung hero, whose compassion and unwavering courage helped save countless of American soldiers.

Airs on WXXI-TV March 19, 2018 at 1:00 am (1 hour long)
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Jewish Film Showcase

The National Center for Jewish Film is an independent, non-profit film archive, distributor and exhibitor. The Center, housed at Brandeis University, owns the world’s largest collection of Jewish-content film. Its unique collection includes silent, vaudeville and Yiddish films, newsreels, institutional films, and home movies; the earliest dating back to 1903. The Center’s priority is the rescue of rare and endangered film materials and it has restored hundreds of films that document the diversity and vibrancy of Jewish culture. The dynamic films selected for the NATIONAL CENTER FOR JEWISH FILM SHOWCASE are representative of the breadth and depth of the collection’s holdings.

  • #1 – Raise the Roof – Rivaling the greatest wooden architecture in history, the synagogues of 18th-century Poland-the last of which were destroyed by the Nazis-inspired artists Rick and Laura Brown to embark on a 10-year pursuit to reconstruct the elaborate roof and painted ceiling of the Gwo Y dziec synagogue. Aided by a team of 300 artisans and students, the show-stopping building was realized and beautifully photographed film chronicles this ambitious project, they had done more than reconstruct a lost synagogue; they recovered a lost world. “How often do you get a chancel to reach deep into history and bring something back?” – Rick Brown. Raise the Roof has enjoyed a wildly successful film festival run, screening at more than 150 film festivals and winning six Best Documentary Awards. The “Raise the Roof” project has received wide press coverage, including in The New York Times, New Republic, The Boston Globe, CNN, Tablet, Forbes. Airs on WXXI on March 19, 2018 at 9:00 pm (Hour and a half long program)
  • #2 – Carvalho’s Journey – A real-life 19th century American western adventure story about Solomon Nunes Carvalho, an observant Sephardic Jew born in 1815 in Charleston, South Carolina. In 1853, traveling with John Fremont’s 5th Westward Expedition through Kansas, Colorado, Utah and California, Carvalho became one of the first photographers to document the sweeping vistas and treacherous terrain of the far American West. Living alongside mountain men, Native Americans, and Mormons, Carvalho overcame enormous odds to produce beautiful art: daguerreotypes that became the lens through which the world experienced the West. The film interweaves stunning HD digital and 16mm film landscape cinematography, rare 19th century photographs, Carvalho’s surviving artwork and daguerreotypes, and interviews with scholars and artists, including modern day daguerreotypist Robert Shlaer who recreates Carvalho’s original daguerreotypes on location. The documentary is narrated by award winning actor Michael Stuhlbarg (Boardwalk Empire, Steve Jobs) with original music by Jamie Saft (composer, Murderball). Airs on WXXI on March 20, 2018 at 8:00 pm (Hour and a half long program)
  • #3 – Ahead of Time: The Extraordinary Journey of Ruth Gruber – For seven decades foreign correspondent and photojournalist Ruth Gruber didn’t just report the news, she made it. Born in 1911 to Russian Jewish immigrants, Ruth Gruber became the youngest Ph.D. in the world before becoming an international journalist at age 24. A fearless trailblazer who defied tradition to become the eyes and conscience of the world, she was the first journalist to enter the Soviet Arctic in 1935, traveled to Alaska as a member of the Roosevelt administration in 1942, escorted Holocaust refugees to America in 1944, covered the Nuremberg trials in 1946, and documented the Palestine-bound Haganah ship Exodus in 1947. Her relationships with world leaders, including Eleanor Roosevelt, President Harry Truman, and Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, gave her unique access and insight into modern history.

    Airs on WXXI-TV on March 20, 2018 at 9:30 pm (Hour and a half long program)
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