science fiction

ITVS’s FUTURESTATES Profiled in The New York Times

The new online fictional series from ITVS represents a huge innovation for public media. Check out the New York Times story below to learn more about the creative concept behind the series and what makes it so unique.

Also, be sure to watch FUTURESTATES today by visiting http://www.futurestates.tv and tell us what you think!

For Web and Public TV, Brief Films That Dramatize Issues

By Elizabeth Jensen
March 7, 2010

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.

The films, which run about 15 minutes each, are meant to attract a diverse audience of so-called millennials, young adults in their 20s and 30s, as well as filmmakers in that demographic group, said Sally Jo Fifer, the president and chief executive of ITVS. Fiction is “what they’re working in,” said Ms. Fifer, and online is where to reach them, ITVS executives said. “We wanted to get that demographic in the public media family,” Ms. Fifer added.

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Tags: fiction, online video, Ramin Bahrani, science fiction, Werner Hertzog

Monday, March 8th, 2010 In the News, Online Connections View Comments

ITVS Launches New Online Fictional Series on Monday

A surrogate (Diana Masi) looks at her new scar in Tze Chun's Silver Sling.

What will life look like in America in the decades and centuries to come?

On Monday, March 8, ITVS will launch FUTURESTATES –– a new online fictional series that represents a huge innovation for public media.

Each of the 11 episodes will be available for free beginning March 8 on the series website www.futurestates.tv with subsequent distribution on pbs.org. FUTURESTATES will also have its theatrical premiere at South by Southwest on Sunday, March 14.

Have your own predictions for the future? Be sure to tell us on the “Predict-o-Meter,” a unique feature on the FUTURESTATES website where you can submit your own predictions about life in the future, and comment on the predictions of others. Think you know when the ice caps will melt? Know when we’ll elect our first female president? Will the rainforest rebound or disappear? Share your predictions with us on Monday.

Are you as excited as we are? Then you won’t want to miss the extended series trailer below!