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).

WPBT2 premieres Independent Lens: Wasteland on Tuesday April 19th at 11:00 pm.

Filmed over nearly three years, Lucy Walker’s WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his home country of Brazil, and to Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest garbage dump located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There Muniz photographs an eclectic band of catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, and works with them to “paint” their portraits using garbage. The resulting collaboration with these inspiring characters provides profoundly moving evidence of the transformative power of art and its impact on the human spirit.

WPBT2 premieres American Master: John Muir in the New World on April 18th at 9:00 pm.

 

Nearly a century after his death, John Muir is remembered and revered as the father of the environmental movement and the founder of the Sierra Club. It was this Scottish American who believed that it was our responsibility as citizens to protect our natural surroundings. And, by example and by passion, he taught us how to care for our wilderness treasures. Through his tireless advocacy and his writings, he almost single-handedly preserved the Yosemite Valley of California and was the force behind the creation of the National Park Service. Filmed throughout the majestic landscapes in which Muir traveled, this documentary places our nation’s most important wilderness assets in a cultural and social context. Muir’s story could not be a timelier reminder of America’s unique and, ultimately, threatened eco-systems.

The documentary also goes into Muir’s private affairs, as well. There is discussion on how he met his wife   Louie. Through his relationships one can see how Muir placed his studies on nature above everything else. He postponed his wedding and often would be on naturist adventures while married to Louie. His devotion to nature was shown through his daily actions and his perseverance to preserving the Yosemite Valley.

WPBT2 will premiere a four part series, Black in Latin America, a film by Henry Louis Gates Jr. on April 19th at 8:00 pm.

Join Henry Louis Gates Jr. as he unveils the history of African presence in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru. In this four part series Gates witnesses the presence of the African culture through art, music, cuisine, dance, politics, and religion. He also witnesses the palpable presence of anti-black racism in the previous countries. 

Episode one:
Tuesday April 19th at 8:00 pm.
BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA: Haiti & the Dominican Republic: An Island Divided: In the Dominican Republic, Professor Gates explores how race has been socially constructed in a society whose people reflect centuries of inter-marriage, and how the country's troubled history with Haiti informs notions about racial classification. In Haiti, Professor Gates tells the story of the birth of the first-ever black republic, and finds out how the slaves's hard fought liberation over Napoleon Bonaparte's French Empire became a double-edged sword.

Episode two:
Tuesday April 26th at 8:00 pm.
BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA: Cuba: The Next Revolution: In Cuba, Professor Gates finds out how the culture, religion, politics and music of this island are inextricably linked to the huge amount of slave labor imported to produce its enormously profitable 19th century sugar industry, and how race and racism have fared since Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959.

Episode three:
Tuesday May 3rd at 8:00 pm.
BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA: Brazil: A Racial Paradise?: In Brazil, Professor Gates delves behind the façade of Carnival to discover how this ‘rainbow nation’ is waking up to its legacy as the world’s largest slave economy.

Episode four:
Tuesday May 10th at 8:00 pm.
BLACK IN LATIN AMERICA: Mexico & Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet: In Mexico and Peru,   Professor Gates explores the almost unknown history of the significant numbers of black people — the two countries together received far more slaves than did the United States —brought to these countries as early as the 16th and 17th centuries, and the worlds of culture that their descendants have created in Vera Cruz on the Gulf of Mexico, the Costa Chica region on the Pacific and in and around Lima, Peru.

 

 

WPBT2 premieres a new series, Ashes to Ashes, beginning April 14th at 9:30 pm.

Ashes to Ashes, the follow up to fan-favorite Life on Mars, sees DCI Gene Hunt and his sidekicks back on our screens. But this time, it’s the 80s calling. Alex Drake, a DCI who uses psychological profiling rather than brute force to nail her men, finds herself in a London of New Romantic pan-sexuality, Two Tone ska and rolled-up suit sleeves after a horrific car accident. And whilst she gets to grips with the self-styled Sherriff of Manchester's 'unorthodox' methods, Gene has to wrestle with the fact that not only does he have to show Alex (a bird!) some professional respect, he also sort of fancies her.

Ashes to Ashes allows us to peek behind the bluff exterior of the hugely popular DCI Hunt, whilst giving  viewers access to a very different, tumultuous world, where poll tax riots, androgynous fashion and angular pop sit side-by-side with Charles'n'Di commemorative plates.