New Season of Global VoicesPremieres Sunday, June 1, 2014, on WORLD Channel

(May 23, 2014, San Francisco, CA) — Independent Television Service (ITVS) and the WORLD Channel announced today the lineup for season seven of Global Voices, the critically acclaimed international documentary television series on the WORLD Channel (check local listings). The first original series to launch on WORLD, Global Voices was included in New York Times television critic Mike Hale’s top ten list of “Favorite TV shows of 2012.” The 2014 season will present more compelling stories often overlooked by American media with a new slate of independent films that introduce U.S. audiences to their global neighbors and open a window into unfamiliar lives, experiences, and perspectives from around the world. 

Kicking off on June 1, the 18-week series continues on Sunday nights at 10 p.m. ET through September 28, and will present ten U.S. premieres of documentaries funded by ITVS, as well as encore presentations of other acclaimed ITVS programs. The day after the WORLD Channel broadcast, each film will be available for free online viewing for 30 to 90 days at worldchannel.org. 

The Global Voices season opener on June 1 is the U.S. premiere of Miss Nikki & The Tiger Girls, filmmaker Juliet Lamont’s intimate portrait of a spirited young Australian band manager as she tries to empower Myanmar's first all-girl band to speak out in one of the world's most repressive regimes. If you think it's hard making it as a female pop group, try doing it with a military dictatorship breathing down your neck. 

Directed by Justin Webster, I Will Be Murdered (June 15), also a U.S. premiere, is a thrilling story of murder, love, and political conspiracy in Guatemala. 

Filmed before, during, and after the Egyptian revolution, Jed Rothstein’s Before the Spring, After the Fall (June 29) is the story of remarkable young people seeking the freedom to define themselves. In 2008, a film crew began documenting a group of young heavy-metal musicians in Egypt. Oppressed by massive social forces beyond their control, the kids — sons of a jailed political dissident and the leader of the only female metal band in the Middle East — saw music as their outlet, their hopes trapped in the traffic-clogged streets of Cairo. Then everything burst wide open. 

In Marlo Poras’s The Mosuo Sisters (July 13), two spirited daughters from China's last remaining matrilineal ethnic minority are thrust into the worldwide economic downturn when they lose the only jobs they’ve ever known. One sister’s interactions with rich Chinese businessmen, lecherous gangsters, Tibetan monks, and fledgling pop stars lead her on a precarious path that pits her hopes and dreams against bitter realities. 

Other U.S. premieres include My So-Called Enemy (July 27), Lisa Gossels' film which, over a seven-year span, follows six Palestinian and Israeli teenage girls committed to justice and mutual understanding as the conflict continues to rage in their homeland; Christopher Rufo’s Diamond in the Dunes (August 10), the true story of hope and baseball in China’s Xinjiang Province — a region harshly divided between an indigenous Muslim minority and the ruling Han Chinese; Before the Revolution (August 17), Dan Shadur’s personal journey back to the last days of the Israeli community in Iran, on the eve of the Islamic revolution, told through the eyes of his family — including the use of his late father’s precious 8mm footage; Wooyoung Choi’s Here Comes Uncle Joe (August 31), in which smiles, love, and tears are shared between 800 elderly people in remote villages in South Korea and the one deliveryman who connects them with the modern world; Casablanca Calling (September 14), by Rosa Rogers, depicts Morocco’s first female religious leaders who are changing their country in a quiet social revolution; and Francine Strickwerda and Laurel Spellman Smith’s Oil & Water (September 21), a David versus Goliath tale set in the Ecuadorian Amazon about two boys coming of age in the middle of one of the world’s worst toxic disasters. 

In addition to the ten U.S. broadcast premieres, the series will also include eight award-winning films, some of which have premiered on PBS’s Independent Lens and POV series: 

n the Matter of Cha Jung Hee (June 8) by Deann Liem; The Fighting Spirit (June 22) by George Amponsah; Laura Poitras’s The Oath (July 6); My Perestroika (July 20) by Robin Hessman; El General (August 3) by Natalia Almada; Ice People (August 24) by Anne Aghion; and Recycle (September 7) by Mahmoud Al Massad. 

The season concludes with Lixin Fan’s acclaimed, Emmy Award-winning Last Train Home (September 28), which the late Roger Ebert called “an extraordinary documentary.” Set against the backdrop of the world’s largest annual human migration, the film follows the fractured lives of a migrant family who travel home on Chinese New Year to reunite with their teenage daughter. 

For a complete lineup of Global Voices films and schedule, please visit: worldchannel.org

About ITVS 
Independent Television Service (ITVS) funds, presents, and promotes award-winning documentaries on public television, innovative new media projects on the Web, and the Emmy® Award-winning weekly series Independent Lens on Monday nights at 10 p.m. on PBS. Mandated by Congress in 1988 and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, ITVS has brought thousands of independently produced programs to American audiences. For more visit itvs.org. 

About WORLD Channel 
The WORLD Channel is a 24/7, multicast channel dedicated to delivering the best of public television's nonfiction, news and documentary programming as well as a growing schedule of original content from independent producers and communities of difference. The complementary website, www.WORLDchannel.org, expands on broadcast topics and fuels content across social media, providing opportunities for broad and diverse audience interaction. WORLD Channel is produced by WGBH/Boston, in partnership with American Public Television and WNET/New York, and in association with the Public Broadcasting Service and the National Educational Telecommunications Association. Funding for WORLD Channel is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Ford Foundation.