Global Voices
From a T-shirt peddler in Zambia to kungfu monks in Brooklyn, from child acrobats in China to teenage silver miners in the mountains of Bolivia, Global Voices presents intimate and resilient human stories that reveal the complexities of our world and its inhabitants. The first original series to launch on PBS WORLD, Global Voices brings North American audiences internationally themed documentaries by U.S.-based and international filmmakers. Making its debut in 2008, the Independent Television Service (ITVS) series features U.S. premieres as well as encore broadcasts of acclaimed ITVS programs. With artistry, heart and unflinching vision, these independent voices champion diversity and provide powerful perspectives not often seen on television. Global Voices is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, with additional funding provided by private foundations.
Get Email UpdatesWatch Global Voices Season 15
Watch Global Voices Season 1
Episode 24
Father Roy: Inside the School of Assassins
aired: Fri, Apr 24, 2009
FATHER ROY follows the fight against the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) from the gates of Fort Benning to the halls of congress. Susan Sarandon narrates this revealing account of the controversial Father Roy Bourgeois and his struggles against the SOA. A Vietnam vet, former missionary and leading grassroots activist, Father Roy’s interest in human rights was spurred by the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador. He focused his aim on the SOA when it was revealed that those responsible for Romero’s death—and hundreds of other atrocities across the region—had trained at the school. According to one congressman, the SOA has "the nefarious distinction of being the place in the United States where the worst human rights abusers in the Western Hemisphere come to learn military tactics”—tactics that many claimed included the use of torture. FATHER ROY shows how one person, risking his own life and freedom, can ultimately use the system to make a difference.
Episode 23
A Panther in Africa
aired: Fri, Apr 24, 2009
A PANTHER IN AFRICA explores the legacy of the 1960s through the present-day life of Pete O’Neal, founder of the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panther Party and an American exile living in Tanzania for over 30 years. The film tells the story of how a radical who advocated violence on the streets of Kansas City ended up a global activist who promotes community service in the impoverished African countryside. In 1969, O’Neal was arrested and later fled to Africa to escape what he insists was a false criminal charge. For over 30 years, he has made Tanzania his home, though he cannot escape the familial and cultural strains of a life spent in exile. O’Neal and his wife now coordinate exchange programs for underprivileged teens and university students, and introduce the Wameru tribe to the pleasures of Charlie Parker and Southern barbecue. This motivating documentary shows how one man has reinterpreted his revolutionary history and applied his life lessons in unexpected ways.
Episode 22
Overbooked
aired: Fri, Apr 24, 2009
Sergio Botto is mannered and polite Italian travel agent and Youssef El Idris a rough, authoritarian Moroccan immigrant who take care of a multiethnic crowd of passengers and their mountain of luggage as they manage a tourist bus from Italy to Morocco. After 15 years in Italy, Youssef controls the whole organization from bookings to departure and is respected by the Arab customers of the region. Sergio stays in the background and observes the crowd from behind his glasses. When he steps into action, surrounded by people he cannot understand, he seems like a fish out of water in his own agency. Yet it is not unusual for his immigrant customers to come to him searching for help: from filling out a job application to an advice on apartments. He counsels them each with attention and pride. As Sergio and Youssef tell us their stories, tend the business and handle their colorful customers, we witness their strange and respectful relationship: a simple yet necessary example of integration.
Episode 21
The Flute Player
aired: Fri, Apr 24, 2009
As a child growing up under Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, Arn Chorn Pond witnessed the darkest heart of humanity. For four long years, Arn did whatever was necessary to stay alive. While imprisoned in a death camp, he followed orders to play propaganda songs on his flute for his captors’ amusement, and was even forced to participate in the execution of his peers. Today Arn has taken his very tragic past and turned it into something inspirational. The memories of Pol Pot’s genocide still haunting him, Arn strives to bring Cambodia’s once outlawed traditional music back to his people. As the few master musicians who survived the Killing Fields grow old, Arn brings a way of life back from the brink of extinction. From the mill town of his adopted Lowell, Massachusetts, to the back streets of Phnom Penh—and mixing traditional music with Cambodian-American hip hop—THE FLUTE PLAYER is a lyrical, poignant documentary about a man struggling to heal the deep scars of his war-torn past.
Episode 19
Greener Grass
aired: Fri, Apr 24, 2009
Set against the backdrop of the choppy history of U.S.-Cuban relations, GREENER GRASS documents how baseball has operated as both bridge and barrier between the two lands. Since 1866, Cubans have lovingly played the game that has represented both independence and modernity. At the time of Fidel Castro's revolution, 10 percent of Major League players were Cuban, and Americans played on Cuban teams as well. The Havana Sugar Kings were poised to join the Major League until Castro banned professional sport from the island. 40 years later, the Baltimore Orioles went to bat against the Cuban National Team in a historic two-game series. GREENER GRASS explores more than a century of baseball history, culminating in the defection of Cuban pitcher Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez. Diverse voices are central to this vivid, musically rich film, which reveals how the sport reflects divergent national identities, as well as underlying tensions of race, democracy and opportunity.
Episode 17
ABC Colombia
aired: Fri, Apr 24, 2009
ABC COLOMBIA is an intimate portrait of a rural community in a part of Colombia entirely controlled by paramilitary forces, rendered through the eyes of the children who grow up there, and who are often forced into very difficult choices. Along the mountainous terrain of the Don Diego River, there is a small building of white cement on whose walls children have drawn the plants and wildlife of the region. This is the school of the children of the campesinos, a single elementary class of 25 students between 5 and 15 years old, the age at which school ends for them. But not all children finish, as many must leave to work as coca-leaf pickers or to patrol the mountains as part of the paramilitary, defending the area’s enormous stretches of coca fields from infiltration by guerrillas or the army. The documentary follows these young protagonists in this problematic setting through an entire school year, exploring some of the realities that nurture and perpetuate the violence in Colombia.
Episode 16
Love Inventory
aired: Sun, Jul 13, 2008
An Israeli filmmaker seeks his missing sister, uncovering a secret that changes his family forever.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 14
Great Wall Across the Yangtze
aired: Sun, Jun 29, 2008
Two million Chinese are displaced by the construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 13
After the Fall
aired: Sun, Jun 22, 2008
A decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this film seeks out its physical and emotional remains.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 11
For God, Tsar and Fatherland
aired: Sun, Jun 8, 2008
Russian nationalism percolates in a castle outside Moscow, home of an emerging right-wing movement.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 10
T-Shirt Travels
aired: Sun, Jun 1, 2008
The story of how secondhand clothing, given away as charity in the west, ends up in Zambia, Africa.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 8
The Day My God Died
aired: Sun, May 18, 2008
An unforgettable look at young girls in Bombay whose lives are shattered by the child sex trade.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 6
Bridge Over the Wadi
aired: Sun, May 4, 2008
A group of young Arab and Jewish children study together in a bilingual school program in Israel.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 5
Anatomy of a Springroll
aired: Sun, Apr 27, 2008
One man's culinary journey from San Francisco to Saigon, blending his roots with his American life.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 2
Shaolin Ulysses: Kungfu Monks in America
aired: Sun, Apr 13, 2008
The lives and ambitions of five Shaolin monks who bring kungfu to America from the temples of China.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Episode 1
Circus School
aired: Sun, Mar 30, 2008
A revealing look at the rigorous physical training endured by young Chinese acrobatic students.
Matching Episodes From The Web
Most Recent Comments
There are no comments yet