WPBT2 premieres Secrets of the Dead: The Silver Pharaoh on May 18th at 10:00 pm

The royal tomb of Pharaoh Psusennes I is one of the most spectacular of all the ancient Egyptian treasures - even more remarkable than that of Tutankhamen. So why hasn’t the world heard about it? What mysteries does it contain? And what does it reveal about ancient Egypt? The tomb was discovered filled with lavish jewels and treasure almost by accident in 1939 by the French archaeologist Pierre Montet while he was excavating in northern Egypt. The royal burial chamber came as a complete surprise, no Egyptologist had anticipated a tomb  of such grandeur in this area. Unfortunately, the tomb was found on  the eve of World War II in Europe and attracted little attention. One of the most startling discoveries inside the tomb was the sarcophagus in which the body was held: It was made of silver with exquisite detail and craftsmanship. No other silver sarcophagus has ever been found  and it is now recognized by many Egyptologists as one of the most exquisite artifacts of ancient Egypt ever to be found. The elaborate tribute within the tomb suggested it was the burial site of someone very important but as archaeologists, using the hieroglyphs inside the tomb, pieced together the identity of the pharaoh, they were left to wonder who Psuesennes I was and why he received such grand treatment. The investigation reveals political intrigue, a lost city and a leader who united a country in turmoil and became the Silver Pharaoh.

WPBT2 premieres American Experience: Freedom Riders on May 16th at 9:00 pm.

In 1961, segregation seemed to have an overwhelming grip on American society. Many states violently enforced the policy, while the federal government, under the Kennedy administration, remained indifferent, preoccupied with matters abroad. That is, until an integrated band of college students, many of whom were the first in their  families to attend a university, decided, en masse, to risk everything and buy a ticket on a Greyhound bus bound for the Deep South. They called themselves the Freedom Riders, and they managed to bring the president and the entire American public face to face with the challenge of correcting civil-rights inequities that plagued the nation.

These Freedom Riders experienced many trials and tribulations along the road. At many bus stops there would be gangs of people waiting there to beat them up or harass them Through their no violent protest the Freedom Riders were finally able to get the attention the Civil Rights Movement needed. The film goes into details as the Freedom Riders make their stops along the road to the Deep South. Witness the different ambushes the Riders faced and the jail time they received. The most uplifting part is when more and more people joined the Ride. It was a time when Americans began to realize that every man was equal, no matter what color they were.

WPBT2 premieres Secrets of the Dead: China’s Terracotta Army on May 4th at 10:00 pm.

The extraordinary story of China’s 8,000 terracotta warriors begins two centuries before the birth of Christ. The first emperor of China was preparing an extravagant tomb for his journey into the afterlife, and decreed that he be protected forever by a monumental army. Since then no one has seen these ancient warriors in their original splendor, brightly painted and fully armed, ready to protect their Emperor for all eternity. Now this once mighty army will be returned to its former glory for the first time. Row upon row of life-size, lavishly painted warriors will rise from the dust of two millennia. But how was a terracotta army of this size made in less than two years using the technology of 2200 years ago? Led by archaeologist Agnes Hsu,  SECRETS OF THE DEAD shows that the Chinese may have Henry Ford beat by more than 2,000 years with their own assembly line used to produce the 8,000-strong Ghost Army.

WPBT2 premieres Independent Lens: A Film Unfinished on Tuesday May 3rd at 11:00 pm.

This haunting film about a film examines a classic Nazi propaganda film used by historians for decades to provide insight into the realities of life in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. The recent discovery of a second reel in an East German archive has thrown the  veracity and intent of the Ghetto footage into question. It becomes clear as film and war  historians examine the outtakes reel that Nazi propagandists and the SA had staged elaborate scenes to mislead the general public about what was really happening in Warsaw.

WPBT2 with Masterpiece Classics premieres a new miniseries South Riding airing on Sundays at 9:00 pm beginning on May 1st.

A feisty schoolteacher returns to her north England home and is drawn to a man who despises everything she stands for on South Riding, Winifred Holtby’s 1936 novel of social consciousness and secret romance. MASTERPIECE Classic presents this Depression-era love story in a three-part miniseries, adapted by celebrated screenwriter Andrew Davies (Little Dorrit, Pride and Prejudice) and starring Anna Maxwell Martin (Bleak House) and David Morrissey (Sense and Sensibility).

Maxwell Martin plays Sarah Burton, a native of fictional South Riding  in Yorkshire, returning to apply for the job of headmistress at the local girls’ high school. Her goal is to bring  new energy, new ideas, and a new outlook to the institution, whose students face a bleak future in the hard economic times of the 1930s. Sarah’s nemesis is landowner Robert Carne, portrayed by David Morrissey. Robert is a tradition-bound gentleman farmer, deeply suspicious of Sarah’s social agenda and offended by her pacifist views, especially since he is a veteran of the Great War. But despite his opposition to her candidacy, she gets the job.

Masterpiece: South Riding is based of a modern classic, South Riding. It was the last novel by Winifred Holtby, who died at age 37 of Bright’s disease a month after completing the manuscript. Knowing that she did not have long to live, she threw herself into what became her most enduring book—a chronicle of her native Yorkshire on the brink of change, as the rigid class system was starting to crumble and outspoken feminists like Sarah were charting a new path for women, not least in matters of the heart.

The show airs on Sundays at 9:00 pm beginning on May 1st.

WPBT2 premieres American Experience: Road to Memphis on May 2nd at 10:00 pm.

"We were never concerned with who killed Martin Luther King, but what killed Martin Luther King," says former King aide Andrew Young in this film, which tells the wildly disparate yet fatefully entwined stories of an assassin, James Earl Ray, and his target, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., against the backdrop of the seething and turbulent forces in American society that led these two men to their violent and tragic collision in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. Based on the book by Hampton Sides (Ghost Soldiers), the program relies on eyewitness testimony from King's inner circle and the officials involved in Ray's capture and prosecution following an intense two-month international manhunt.

WPBT2 premieres Nature: Salmon Running the Gauntlet on May 1st at 8:00 pm.

Investigate the parallel stories of collapsing Pacific salmon populations and how biologists and engineers have become instruments in audacious experiments to replicate every stage of the fish’s life cycle in NATURE Salmon: Running the Gauntlet. Each desperate effort to save salmon has involved replacing their natural cycle of reproduction and death with a radically manipulated life history. Our once great runs of salmon are now conceived in laboratories, raised in tanks, driven in trucks and farmed in pens. NATURE goes beyond the ongoing debate over how to save an endangered species to expose a wildly creative, hopelessly complex and stunningly expensive approach to managing salmon.

Louisa May Alcott’s Life and Work Discussed at Broward County Libraries!

 

Louisa May Alcott is recognized around the world for her novel Little Women, but few know Alcott as the bold, compelling woman who grew up in the innermost circle of the Transcendentalist and antislavery movements, served as a Civil War army nurse, and led a secret literary life writing pulp fiction. Louisa May Alcott was her own best character and her life was her own best plot.

The Broward County Library’s public programs shed light on Louisa May Alcott by exploring her life and the historical and cultural context that inspired her remarkable body of work. Alcott’s childhood was characterized by chronic economic difficulties and frequent uprooting due to her father’s utopian experiments. Despite her family’s financial hardships, Alcott experienced a rich intellectual life influenced by family friends such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. When slavery threatened the nation, the Alcott home was an Underground Railroad stop for fugitives; during the Civil War, Alcott wanted to fight, but as a woman she could enlist only as a nurse.

To support Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, a documentary film co-produced by Nancy Porter Productions, Inc. and Thirteen/WNET New York’s American Masters, Broward County Library will present six programs from May through September 2011. The six series program will re-introduce audiences to Louisa May Alcott’s story. Louisa May Alcott programs in libraries are sponsored by the American Library Association Public Programs Office with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Additional sponsors are the Florida Center for the Book, the Broward Public Library Foundation, the Friends of the Fort Lauderdale Libraries and WPBT2.

The six programs are located at the following libraries in Broward County:

Saturday, May 7th, 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm

Alvin Sherman Library, Research and Information Technology Center at Nova Southeastern University, 3100 Ray Ferrero Jr. Blvd., Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Gallery 2nd Floor

Louisa May Alcott: Through Her Eyes. A community-wide library event focusing on the life, works, and times of Louisa may Alcott. View film clips from the documentary film, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women with commentary by Nova Southeastern University Scholar Dr. Christine Jackson.

Wednesday, June 8th, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Main Library, 6th Floor, 100 S. Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Louisa May Alcott Wrote That?  Reading and Discussion of Louisa May Alcott’s lesser know works with Scholar Dr. Christine Jackson of Nova Southeastern University. The project scholar will facilitate a discussion exploring these short works, which together help display the range of Alcott’s writing and exemplify her strong and dynamic connections to the culture in which she lived. Copies of her stories will be available at the program.

Tuesday, August 9th, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

South Regional/ Broward College Library, 7300 Pines Blvd. Pembroke Pines

Louisa May Alcott: Literary Phenomenon and Social Reformer

Scholar led program with Dr. Chrisitine Jackson of Nova Southeastern University focusing on Louisa May Alcott as a self-trained and successful professional writer. The discussion will center on how Alcott used her writing to advance many of her era’s ideas for social reform, such as Abolitionism and women’s rights.

Thursday, September 15th, 1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

Main Library, 6th Floor, 100 S. Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Reading and discussion of the biography – Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women.

A scholar-led discussion by Dr. Christine Jackson of Nova Southeastern University of the biography; documentary film clips will be presented during the discussion.

Wednesday, September 21st, 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm

West Regional Library Auditorium, 8601 West Broward Blvd, Plantation, Florida

Film Screening and Discussion – Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. Discussion led by scholar Dr. Christine Jackson of Nova Southeastern University.

Thursday, September 22nd, 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm

Main Library, 6th Floor, 100 S. Andrews Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Make your personal Louisa May Alcott journal with writer and artist Susan Buzzi. Susan Buzzi will talk about Louisa May Alcott as a young writer and have teens decorate and design their own journals.

WPBT2 will broadcast the documentary Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women during the libraries program series. The first presentation of the 1-1/2 hour documentary is May 1st at 6:00 pm on WPBT2.2 Create (Comcast 202).

Join WPBT2 for An Evening with Dave Grusin on May 12th at 8:00 pm.

 
 
 

Dave Grusin, 10 time Grammy Award-winning and Academy Award-winning composer, conductor and pianist has scored some of the most entertaining and enduring films in the past half-century.  An Evening with Dave Grusin, (available on CD, Blu-ray Disc and ROBA iPad App), is a groundbreaking live program that captures him conducting and performing with a host of stars and backed by the University of Miami Frost School of Music’s Henry Mancini Institute Orchestra at the Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami. 

The musical selections feature Dave’s award-winning film scores for On Golden Pond, Tootsie, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Goonies and more.  Additionally, Dave celebrates the music of great American composer George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, Henry Mancini’s Moon River and Leonard Bernstein’s music for the Broadway hit, West Side Story.  Dave is joined by guest artists: Patti Austin, Jon Secada, Monica Mancini, Gary Burton, Arturo Sandoval, Nestor Torres and Sammy Figueroa. 

The concert was part of the 2009 JAZZ ROOTS: a Larry Rosen Jazz Series, conceived to be as much about education as it is about music.  As one of the Adrienne Arsht Center’s largest and most dynamic outreach efforts, the JAZZ ROOTS series provides an in-depth, behind-the-scenes performance and educational component to local jazz high school students during each show

Grusin’s album is, set for release on Heads Up International, a division of Concord Music Group, on April 26, 2011, is a collection of 12 songs from the performance. The groundbreaking ROBA Interactive iPad app for the project will also be available that day, and includes over 300 pages of photos, videos, audio options, artist interviews, “making of” footage, and more

 

Meet Award Winning Filmmaker, Ken Burns!

Join WPBT2 and award-winning filmmaker, Ken Burns for a night of gangsters, rumrunners, flappers and speakeasies as they host a screening for Ken Burn’s new film, Prohibition.  The screening will be held on Thursday, June 9 at 6:30pm at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts Amaturo Theatre.  Admission is $5 and tickets are available at www.wpbt2.org/kenburns or by calling 305-424-4025.

 

Burns will lead a discussion on the film with local experts on the broader topics of civility and democracy, which he explores in this project.  He will also answer audience questions following the screening.  Come dressed in your best outfit from the 1920s and enjoy music from that era prior to the screening.

Burns has been making films for more than thirty years.  Named as one of the most influential documentary makers of all time, Burns has gone on to direct and produce some of the most acclaimed historical documentaries ever made including The Civil War, Baseball, The Tenth Inning, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, Jazz, The War and many more.  

 

The new Ken Burns documentary, Prohibition, is scheduled to air on WPBT2 in fall 2011.  The three-part, documentary film series, directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, tells the story of the rise, rule and fall of the 18^th Amendment to the US Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.  The film raises vital questions that are as relevant today as they were 100 years ago – about means and ends, individual rights and responsibilities, and the proper role of government.

Local partners for the screening include: Broward Center for the Performing Arts, Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, City of Fort Lauderdale Centennial Committee and the Broward County Cultural Division, a service of Art Serve, Inc.