New Website Offers Opportunity To Support PBS Program About Adoption http://www.adoptionfilm.org
A new Website, AdoptionFilm.org, recently launched with the purpose of raising money to fund the production of "Adoption: An American Revolution," a two-hour PBS documentary special, with coordinated outreach to schools and communities, that will explore the impact adoption is having on private and public life in America.
BOSTON, MA (PRWEB) August 10, 2005 -- Individuals eager to see an honest,
balanced portrayal of adoption on television now have the opportunity to be a
part of the process to make it happen, with the launch of AdoptionFilm.org, a
Web site intended to attract individual support for a proposed documentary.
"Adoption: An American Revolution" (working title), is a special project for
national public television broadcast that will include a two-hour film, an
extensive Web site and an ambitious outreach campaign to schools and
communities. The film will use interviews with adoptive and birth parents and
extended families, with adopted children and adults, and adoption professionals
and experts to explore the major impact that adoption is having on private and
public life in America.
Program producer WGBH has already secured partial
funding for the project from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and
the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), but that grant came with a deadline:
final funding needs to be in place by the end of 2005. So WGBH is turning
directly to viewers for the support needed to produce the project, recognizing
that the real story of how adoption is changing America has the potential to
appeal to the millions of Americans who are directly affected. One-third of
people in the US now have someone in their family who was adopted, and many more
have friends and neighbors who were adopted.
The project’s executive
producer, Judith Vecchione, calls this “a revolution in adoption” and points to
huge changes in Americans’ attitudes towards adoption -- from a time, not so
long ago, when some parents lied to their own children about being adopted, to
today’s view of adoption as another wonderful way to form a family. “But these
changes are rarely reflected in the media, which still portrays adoption with
negative stereotypes and shows like ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’” she says. “We want to
bring to our viewers the real story of adoption in the US
today.”
Visitors to http://www.adoptionfilm.org can:
Learn more about the
fundraising effort and the entire “Adoption: An American Revolution”
project;
Meet some of the “Faces of Adoption” and add your
own;
Read the “Filmmakers’ Journal” for a behind-the-scenes look at how
public television programs are developed;
Make a secure donation to
support the production of “Adoption: An American Revolution;”
Follow our
progress by signing up for our e-mail newsletter;
Help us “Spread the
Word” by sending information on the project to others you think might be
interested, or use our toolkit to establish a link to
AdoptionFilm.org.
"We’re very excited about this new opportunity," says
WGBH Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jon Abbott. “Funding from
viewers has always been critically important to sustaining public television at
both the local and the national level, but we've never had a mechanism for our
broad range of viewers to directly support production of new programs. Now
viewers can add their contributions –in any amount -- to the projects that
matter most to them.”
WGBH Boston is America's preeminent public
broadcasting producer, the source of fully one-third of PBS's prime-time lineup,
along with some of public television's best-known lifestyle shows and children's
programs and many public radio favorites. Its production menu is diverse,
including Nova, Frontline, American Experience, Antiques Roadshow, Masterpiece
Theatre, Arthur, and Zoom on PBS and The World and Sound & Spirit on public
radio. WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys,
duPont-Columbia Awards…even two Oscars.
Contact:
Lisa
Cerqueira
617-300-5334
e-mail protected from spam bots
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/8/prweb270434.htm