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Mary-Louise Parker to Host Independent Lens

43s
The Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens is proud to announce that the multi-award winning actress Mary-Louise Parker will host the upcoming tenth anniversary season, premiering on Thursday, October 13, 2011 at 10 PM (check local listings). Parker, the star of the acclaimed Showtime series Weeds, is the latest in the distinguished company of Independent Lens hosts.
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Wham! Bam! Islam!: Behind the Scenes

4m 42s / TV-PG
Isaac Solotaroff has worked as a documentary producer and editor since 1998. His work has been nominated for an Emmy Award and received a special commendation from the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences.
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Independent Lens Launches Its Tenth Season

2m 18s
In 10 years, Independent Lens has brought more than 275 films to PBS. The stories and storytellers we continue to champion make the series the most diverse on television. Our goal is to help viewers better understand today's complex world by taking them to places they wouldn't otherwise see, and encounter people they wouldn't otherwise meet.
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Wham! Bam! Islam!: Imagining New Heroes for Muslim Children

1m 19s / TV-PG
Naif Al-Mutawa, the creator of The 99, describes reading about a Palestinian businessman who published a sticker book called the Intifada Album that extolled the virtues of suicide bombers. He would cite this as an example to potential funders for his own project, explaining that Muslim children needed new heroes.
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Two Spirits: Father Figures

2m 35s / TV-PG
Author, photographer, and activist Mark Thompson describes his experience being mentored as a youth by a gay couple who set a positive example of how to live a creative and healthy life. This kind of mentoring is very important to help young people like Fred grow up and be all that they possibly can be.
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Two Spirits: The Changing Ones

2m 34s / TV-PG
The world struggles for an understanding of what the terms "gay, straight, bisexual, and transgender" mean. But Native American beliefs about the spectrum of the masculine and feminine also connect with a gender-bending tradition from the Middle Ages in Europe.
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Two Spirits: Kids Like Fred

2m 40s / TV-PG
Activist Cathy Renna describes "overkill," the inordinate level of violence which is common in hate crimes, as Fred's mother Paula copes with the desecration of Fred's grave and murder site by vandals and tries to keep kids like Fred safe.
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Two Spirits: Gender as a Spectrum, Not a Divide

2m 24s / TV-PG
In traditional Navajo culture, there are 4 genders which include the nadleehi and dilbaa -- persons born, respectively, as males or females, but who fulfill the roles of the other in adulthood. In this excerpt from the film, a more fluid way of describing gender is considered.
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Striving to Be Accepted, Not Tolerated

2m 32s / TV-PG
In Navajo, nadleehi means "one who is transformed," and as the film traces the ramifications of Fred's murder, it also shows the transformation being undertaken by Native activists who are working to restore the rich heritage of two-spirit people and to claim their place within their tribal communities.
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"This is How I'm Gonna Be"

2m 43s / TV-PG
When Fred Martinez told his mother that he felt as if he was both a boy and a girl, she explained that this was a special gift, according to traditional Navajo culture. But the place where two discriminations meet is a dangerous place to live, and Fred became one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history when he was brutally murdered at 16.
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The Bravest Choice Is To Be Yourself

2m 1s / TV-PG
Two Spirits is the tragic story of a mother's loss of her son with a revealing look at the largely unknown history of a time when the world wasn't simply divided into male and female, and many Native American cultures held places of honor for people of integrated genders.
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Geena Davis Talks About "Women and Girls Lead"

1m 8s
Oscar-winning actor Geena Davis helped launch ITVS's Women and Girls Lead campaign at the PBS Annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. During the conference, Davis discussed her own work on gender discrimination in media, as well as ITVS's multi-year initiative, Women and Girls Lead, aimed at supporting women and girls' leadership through independent films.
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Turning Trash into Cash in Cairo

1m 34s / TV-PG
Welcome to the world's largest garbage village located on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. The Zaballeen recycle 80 percent of the trash they collect--far more than other recycling initiatives. But now a multi-national corporation threatens their livelihood. Follow three teenage boys born into the business who are forced to make choices that will impact the survival of their community.
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Welcome to Shelbyville: Desperately Seeking Southern Hospita

3m 4s / TV-PG
Although students in a local ESL class work to gain understanding and acceptance, change comes hard to some citizens of Shelbyville, Tennessee who seem divided in their reaction to Somali immigrants moving into their community. Don't miss Welcome to Shelbyville on Independent Lens.
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