ITVS (PBS) Offers Short Films on Social Issues

[Frank W. Baker]

From the New York Times: ITVS is best known for its financing of documentaries, many of which appear on PBS ’s “Independent Lens” series. But beginning on Monday, the organization will present a series of brief, fictional films that cast social issues into the future, in the hopes of drawing a younger audience not necessarily interested in public television. The new films, 11 in all, will appear first on the Web, and later move to broadcast. Their subjects will be familiar to those who watch ITVS-financed documentaries: climate change, immigration and exploitation of the poor, among other social issues. Under the series title “Futurestates,” the films will give fictional treatments to the same kinds of subjects, some with a science-fiction twist, exploring how those issues can play out in the future.