Independent Lens Announces 2008 - 2009 Schedule

The award-winning weekly PBS series Independent Lens returns in October with its most provocative and entertaining lineup to date. Once again hosted by Academy Award nominee Terrence Howard, Independent Lens takes viewers across the country and around the world, exploring subjects as diverse as Pakistani politics, atom smashing, the U.S. deficit, revolutionary typefaces, Texas justice, the Mississippi Mardi Gras color line, and women and gays in the military.

“The quality of the filmmakers represented in this season’s lineup is amazing. We have two masters of the form—Albert Maysles and Jon Else—as well as new films from talents such as Brett Morgen and Stacy Peralta,” said Lois Vossen, executive producer of Independent Lens.

“We’re happy to be welcoming back previous Independent Lens filmmakers, such as Patrick Creadon and Johnny Symons. And new discoveries are incredibly exciting, like the work of Gonzalo Arijon, whose film Stranded: The Andes Plan Crash Survivors has astounded audiences around the world with its power.”

The season premiere for the sixth season of Independent Lens is Brett Morgen’s revolutionary Chicago 10, scheduled for Wednesday, October 22, at 9 p.m. on WGVU HD and 10 p.m. on WGVU TV. With its boldly original use of animation combined with rare archival footage, the film explores the buildup to and unraveling of the Chicago Conspiracy Trial following the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention. The characters are the stuff of legend: Black Panther leader Bobby Seale; an exasperated Judge Julius Hoffman; defense attorney William Kuntsler; SDS defendant Tom Hayden; and Yippies Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Vividly bringing them to life are the vocal talents of Hank Azaria, Mark Ruffalo, James Urbaniak, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, Nick Nolte and Roy Scheider, among others.

The series then travels to Pakistan. In Dinner with Musharraf: A Nation’s Journey (October 28 at at 10 p.m. on WGVU HD and 11 p.m. on WGVU TV), the filmmakers combine a surprisingly frank interview with Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf with a primer on Pakistan’s past and the thoughts of a wide variety of Pakistanis.

Other international films (one of the hallmarks of Independent Lens) include: Lakshmi and Me (India); Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors (France); Our Disappeared/Nuestros Desaparecidos (Argentina); Arusi Persian Wedding (Iran); and two films from Africa, Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai and Milking the Rhino.

Films about the arts are prominently featured. Jon Else, along with Bonni Cohen, returns with Wonders are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic, a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a grand opera and the atomic bomb. Albert Maysles, along with Kelly and Lou Gonda, takes a look at how his original documentary became a cult classic and then morphed into a Broadway musical (Grey Gardens: From East Hampton to Broadway). Doc, a biography of literary figure Harold Louis “Doc” Humes, made by his daughter, and Operation Filmmaker, in which an Iraqi film student lands his dream job working on Hollywood movie, round out the quartet.

Independent Lens again brings some of the most talked-about films to television. Lioness is a look at how five women in Iraq became involved in front-line combat despite the official policy against their participation, and Ask Not is an exploration of the effects of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on current and former servicemen and servicewomen. Made in America provides a historical and sociological context for the rise of the devastating gang violence in South Los Angeles; Tulia, Texas takes a look at the war on drugs as fought in a small Texas town; and I.O.U.S.A. tackles one of the biggest problems facing the United States: our mounting national debt.

The series will be supported by ITVS’ Community Cinema screening series. The monthly screening series features selections from the upcoming Independent Lens season. Presented in partnership with local public television stations and leading community organizations, Community Cinema holds preview screenings in select markets across the country, making a real contribution on a range of current social issues by connecting communities with organizations, information and the opportunity to get involved.

To see the full schedule of films for broadcast, click here. Independent Lens airs most weeks on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on WGVU HD and 11 p.m. on WGVU TV.

For this season's line-up from WGVU's Independent Cinema series, held in cooperation with the ITVS Community Cinema program, visit our Cinema page.

The WGVU Morning Show presents The End of Summer Tour

This August and September, Morning Show host Shelley Irwin will be traveling throughout West Michigan for a series of special on-location reports about these destinations. She'll talk with local residents and business owners to wrap up the summer season and talk about what life in their town or city is all about. Tune in for reports from these communitites:

Friday, August 29: Whitehall/Montague

Friday, September 5: Holland

Tuesday, September 9: Saugatuck

Tuesday, September 30: Ada

Muskegon and others TBA.

All features start at 9 a.m. The WGVU Morning Show airs weekdays, 9 - 11 a.m. on WGVU AM & FM. Click here for more information.

Weekend Edition Wants to Hear from You!

Throughout August, Weekend Edition Sunday focuses on the intersection of race with politics and they’d like to hear from you. The program is looking for videos, audio and text posts about your life experiences with race and how it relates to you as a voter. Click here to learn more and see how you can submit a story.

In September, the topics switches to Yellowstone National Park and fire management, 20 years after the most devastating fire in U.S. history destroyed 36% of the park.

Weekend Edition airs Sunday mornings at 8 on WGVU AM & FM.

Austin City Limits Announces Season 34 Line-Up

The award winning concert series Austin City Limits returns to PBS for its 34th season this October with its characteristic array of musical guests from every genre of contemporary music. The new season finds many artists making their first appearance on the famed stage including Foo Fighters, Gnarls Barkley, Manu Chao, Bettye LaVette, Pinetop Perkins, Sharon Jones, Jakob Dylan, Erykah Badu, The Swell Season, Nick Lowe and more. Returning guests include My Morning Jacket and a special collaborative concert Lyle Lovett & Friends: Songwriter's Special featuring Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, John Hiatt and Guy Clark. Season 34 will open with an encore episode featuring R.E.M., taped during the 2008 SxSW Music Conference. A tentative schedule of airdates follows below.

October 4 R. E. M.
October 11 Bettye LaVette/Pinetop Perkins
October 18 Lyle Lovett & Friends: Songwriters Special with Lyle Lovett, Guy Clark, John Hiatt, & Joe Ely
October 25 Jakob Dylan/Carrie Rodriguez
November 1 My Morning Jacket
November 8 Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings/Carolyn Wonderland
November 15 Aimee Mann/Iron and Wine
November 22 Erykah Badu
November 29 Coldplay (encore)
December 6 Norah Jones (encore)
December 13 Crowded House (encore)
December 20 Bloc Party/Ghostland Observatory (encore)
December 27 Wilco (encore)
January 3 Lucinda Williams/Old Crow Medicine Show (encore)
January 10 Paolo Nutini/Grupo Fantasma (encore)
January 17 Foo Fighters
January 24 Gnarls Barkley/Thievery Corporation
January 31 Manu Chao
February 7 Duffy/(TBA)
February 14 Nick Lowe/The Swell Season: Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova

Austin City Limits airs Saturday nights at 9 on WGVU HD and at 11 on WGVU TV. To find out more about the show, visit the Austin City Limits web site.

NOVA Announces Fall Schedule

NOVA airs Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. on WGVU TV and Tuesday nights at 8 & 11 p.m. on WGVU HD. Episodes and airdates may be subject to change. Visit NOVA's web site for more information.

Arctic Dinosaurs
October 7, 2008
How did dinosaurs survive and even thrive in the gloom of the dark and frigid polar regions? Polar Dinosaurs explores this intriguing but little-known enigma in contemporary paleontology, following a unique field expedition, covered exclusively by NOVA, as it sets out for Alaska's North Slope to defrost a jackpot of new fossil clues. The team of researchers combines extreme engineering and perilous fossil hunting - including blasting a tunnel into the permafrost to collect
fossils trapped beneath the ice - to reveal provocative new clues how the polar dinosaurs lived, and to their final extinction. With the help of stunning CGI, NOVA breathes life into the polar dinosaurs' lives and environment in vivid detail. With Alaska's spectacular wilderness as a backdrop, this episode will reveal a prehistoric lost world for the first time on television.

Space Shuttle Disaster
October 14, 2008
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas just sixteen minutes before it was due to land. All seven astronauts aboard perished and the worldwide repercussions on the future of the space shuttle program were enormous. What caused the Columbia tragedy? An engineering flaw? A failure within NASA? A lack of financing? And could this catastrophe have been avoided? Through interviews with astronauts and their families as well as with members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, Space Shuttle Disaster gives viewers a new look at the Columbia tragedy - and at NASA itself. From the creation of NASA through decades of technical and financial compromises, this episode looks back at the triumphs and tragedies of the shuttle program and forward to the future of manned exploration to the moon and beyond. It gets to the heart of what has gone wrong in the past, and how to make sure it never happens again.

Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives
October 21, 2008
This episode follows the lead singer of the cult band Eels, Mark Oliver Everett, on his journey of discovery to learn about his father, Hugh Everett III, a physicist who gave birth to one of science's most bizarre and influential theories - the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. This predicts that parallel universes are constantly splitting off from the one we all live in. At first derided, the theory has steadily gained traction among physicists while Mark has grown increasingly curious about his emotionally distant father. Although they shared the same house, Mark knew nothing about his father's work. In this intelligent and imaginative film, the wry and charismatic Mark embarks on a journey back into his father's life, meeting his old friends and colleagues, and takes a crash course in the weird world of quantum mechanics in order to understand his father's mind-blowing theory.

Hunting the Hidden Dimension
October 28, 2008
What do movie special effects, the stock market, heart attacks, and the rings of Saturn have in common? They're all connected by a revolutionary new branch of math called fractals, which has changed the way we see the world and opened up a vast new territory to scientific analysis and understanding. NOVA tells the dramatic story of a group of pioneering mathematicians who transformed fractals from a mathematical curiosity that few took seriously into an approach that is touching nearly every branch of science and technology.

Alien from Earth
November 11, 2008
NOVA presents exclusive coverage of new excavations that were undertaken in the summer of 2007 at the site of Ling Bua on the island of Flores, Indonesia. These are the first investigations of the cave site since the sensational discovery of tiny and bizarre human fossil bones at the site in 2004. NOVA will investigate the furious scientific debate currently raging on what "Hobbit" bones represent. Are they fossils of a previously unknown primitive branch of the human family? Or are they remains of a dwarf race of modern humans suffering from a strange pathological condition?

The Bible's Buried Secrets (2 hrs)
November 18, 2008
NOVA takes television viewers on a fascinating scientific journey to the beginnings of modern religion in a landmark new documentary. NOVA's comprehensive archeological and literary
investigation traces the origins of the ancient Israelites, explores the evolution of their belief in one God, and reveals how the manifestation of their faith, the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament, was written. In-depth discussions with leading biblical scholars and archeologists were filmed with spectacular artifacts from ancient cities dating back three thousand years. These interviews - along with historic works of art, ancient artifacts, animations of biblical passages and scenes, and dramatic recreations of extraordinary events - help tell the story of the ancient Israelites and how they found their one God - the God not only of modern Judaism, but also of Christianity and Islam.

Ocean Animal Rescue
November 25, 2008
The world's oceans are in trouble. Warming seas and man-made pollutants are combining to unleash toxic algae blooms that are decimating whales, sea lions and other marine mammals. In a high action film, NOVA explores this crisis through the exploits of Dr. Frances Gulland, a San Francisco veterinarian, and her team, who run the equivalent of a West Coast ER for marine mammals. On a typical day, listless sea lions flop on their sides, too exhausted to lift their heads. Others are agitated. Another chews obsessively on a flipper. They are all victims of a marine neurotoxin made by an organism that feeds on algae. Dr. Gulland is committed to trying to save these sick animals one at a time, but she is also desperately trying to figure out the science behind what's killing them.

Is There Life on Mars?
December 30, 2008
More than four years after they landed on Mars, NASA's twin robot explorers, Spirit and Opportunity, have lasted sixteen times longer and driven twenty times farther than expected. Along the way, they've endured the worst Martian storm ever recorded and survived near-fatal
software glitches, a broken wheel, and hair-raising climbs and descents on steep slopes. And since Mary 25th, 2008, they've had new company on the red planet: NASA's Phoenix probe, which dramatically "tasted" water ice on the planet in July. This episode showcases the latest scientific results from the rovers and Phoenix, which has been providing the first on-the-spot chemical tests ever undertaken on an alien planet. Along with the findings of the Mars rovers, the Phoenix is poised to reveal provocative new clues in the tantalizing search for water and life on the Red Planet.

Jim Lehrer and Gwen Ifill named as Moderators in Presidential Debates

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Paul G. Kirk, Jr. and Frank J. Fahrenkopf, Jr., co-chairmen of the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), today announced the moderators for the 2008 general election presidential and vice presidential debates. The moderators, and the schedule and locations for the debates (as announced on November 21, 2007), are as follows:

First presidential debate
Friday, September 26
The University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss.
Jim Lehrer, Executive Editor and Anchor, The NewsHour, PBS

Vice presidential debate
Thursday, October 2
Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
Gwen Ifill, Senior Correspondent, The NewsHour, and Moderator and Managing Editor, Washington Week, PBS

Second presidential debate (town meeting)
Tuesday, October 7
Belmont University, Nashville, Tenn.
Tom Brokaw, Special Correspondent, NBC News

Third presidential debate
Wednesday, October 15
Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
Bob Schieffer, CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent, and Host, Face the Nation

Each debate will begin at 9 p.m. EST and all will air on WGVU TV.

The format for the debates, announced on November 21, 2007, will be:

- Each debate will have a single moderator and last for 90 minutes.
- In the first and third presidential debates and the vice presidential debate, the candidates will be seated with the moderator at a table.
- One presidential debate will focus primarily on domestic policy and one presidential debate will focus primarily on foreign policy. The second presidential debate will be held as a town meeting in which citizens will pose questions to the candidates. The vice presidential debate will cover both foreign and domestic topics.
- During the first and third presidential debates, and the vice presidential debate, the time will be divided into eight, ten-minute segments. The moderator will introduce each segment with an issue on which each candidate will comment, after which the moderator will facilitate further discussion of the issue, including direct exchange between the candidates for the balance of that segment.
- The participants in the town meeting will pose their questions to the candidates after reviewing their questions with the moderator for the sole purpose of avoiding duplication. The participants will be chosen by the Gallup Organization and will be undecided voters from the Nashville, Tenn. standard metropolitan statistical area. During the town meeting, the moderator has discretion to use questions submitted by Internet.
- Time at the end of the final presidential debate will be reserved for closing statements.

Los Lonely Boys Rock Grand Rapids and WGVU!

Tour with Los Lobos has Los Lonely Boys living the dream

GRAND RAPIDS - As JoJo Garza puts it, the tour pairing two of the country's most respected Mexican-American rock bands - Los Lobos and Los Lonely Boys - is "really a dream come true."

After all, Garza and his brothers in Los Lonely Boys have idolized Los Lobos since they first heard the band's rendition of the popular song "La Bamba" in the 1987 movie about singer Ritchie Valens.

"They're living legends to us," said Garza, bassist and singer for the Texas trio. "We couldn't be more ecstatic about it. It's a real honor to share the stage with them. ... They did pave the way for a lot of Latin-American artists who sing rock 'n' roll and do traditional stuff, too."

The concert happens Thursday, August 7 at Frederik Meijer Gardens. Read the full article here.


Tune in to WGVU TV & WGVU HD on Wednesday, September 17 at 9:30 p.m. for the new film Los Lonely Boys Cottonfields and Crossroads. After a childhood of playing cantinas and honky tonks from Texas to Tennessee, Los Lonely Boys have rocked their way to the top of the American music industry, determined to fulfill their father’s long-held dream. This documentary feature film tells the story of three Mexican-American brothers from San Angelo, Texas, who create a unique sound that melds the core of the early San Angelo music scene of the 1950s and 60s with a signature style they call “Texican.”