Pacific Heartbeat is a series for American Public Television by Pacific Islanders in Communications and PBS Hawaii that showcases the stories of Pacific Islanders, drawing viewers into the heart and soul of Pacific Island culture. Sizzle reel for season 3.
Trailer editor: Shirley Thompson
Executive Producers: Leanne Ferrer and Robert Pennybaker.
Deep in the jungle of rural Guam, Micronesian immigrants from Chuuk are living a dream come true: they have purchased land to build homes and plant crops for their families. These new migrants come determined to find work, plant their breadfruit trees and send their children to “American” schools. So they are devastated when the Guam Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) threatens to evict them. With their American Dream at stake, the residents organize and fight back.
A man who would become a saint: Rev. Frederick B. “Ted” Howden, Jr., a small town minister from New Mexico, leaves his wife and three small children to volunteer as an Army Chaplain in 1941. He’s halfway around the world in the Philippines when World War Two erupts…only his letters home survive. From the Bataan Death March to a Japanese POW camp, a filmmaker follows an emotional roadmap across generations and retraces history and her grandfather’s final days
Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond’s fascinating and entertaining look at the history of the American Indian in cinema. This trailer was screened at the Television Critics Association meeting in August 2010. REEL INJUN aired as part of the 2010 – 2011 season of Independent Lens on PBS.
Trailer editor: Shirley Thompson
Executive producer for Independent Lens: Lois Vossen
What happens to a vegetarian who moves to the Alaskan frontier? A wry search for the ‘right thing’ to eat that leads to climbing mountains with women hunters, communing with vegans and talking moose meat with teens in the Arctic. PBS Broadcast 2010
This one-hour documentary profiles the language of Hawai’i’s working people in its rise from plantation jargon to a source of island identity and pride. Born on sugar plantations and spoken by more than half of Hawai’i’s population, this language captures the essence of multi-ethnic Hawai’i and is the language of Hawai’i’s heart and soul. Once again under attack by educators and bloggers, will Pidgin survive? National PBS Broadcast 2009 – 2010.
For the 2012 PBS Showcase. This reel, presented by Pacific Islanders in Communications, opened the conference in the first session of the first day, and opened for my favorite ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro. Play it loud!
This documentary follows Chilean exile Hector Salgado as he returns to Chile from the US to seek and confront the men who imprisoned him and who tortured and killed his friends after the 1973 coup.
Best Editing Award, September 2007, Cine Ceara Film Festival, Fortaleza, Brazil
Through intimate interviews with both her Jewish relatives in America and her German Lutheran relatives abroad, she discovers a rich family tapestry spanning three continents, shaped by war, courage, prejudice, and fear. Tangled Roots gives a personal voice to a rarely-heard minority, a generation of German children branded forever by their parent’s actions during the war. The film also gives an original voice to the countless Jewish friends and family changed forever by the horrors of the Holocaust.
