Archive for Producer's Picks
Last week we asked our fans on Facebook and Twitter what has been your favorite AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film over the past two seasons. You gave us a great response, and we would like to share the results. Many of the films are streaming for free on our website, so if you have not had the chance to see some of the films listed below, you never know -- you may soon have a new favorite!
When we first began the task of tackling the history of abolitionism four years ago, we were faced with a daunting task: the movement spanned decades, the leaders were numerous, the history complicated and the scholarly literature voluminous. And yet there was no book that told the overarching story of the abolitionists, and no guide for capturing the courage and struggles of these remarkable civil rights heroes. We decided that the way to grab the attention of a broad television audience was to focus on a handful of key characters -- that is, to create a character-driven mini-series set against the backdrop of a tumultuous time in American history.
Got old photos? Win our Pin Drive Contest by putting them on our Abolitionist Map of America for a free Abolitionists DVD!
Watch a preview of The Abolitionists, coming February 2013 - the story of abolitionist allies Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown and Angelina Grimké who turned a fringe movement against slavery into a force that changed a nation.
2011 was a great year for the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE website. Our huge stand-alone website for Freedom Riders featured the only comprehensive online list of all 400+ of the original 1961 Freedom Riders, along with a stellar 10-day live blogging experiment in May during which we posted 132 videos and 173 essays from the 2011 Student Freedom Ride. We created a really cool interactive that details the Panama Canal, posted some of America's first imaginative depictions of dinosaurs, and published several comprehensive timelines including Deadliest Workplace Accidents, U.S. Foreign Aid, and Milestones in the American Gay Rights Movement. But enough about what I liked! Let's get to the content that our users flocked to the most.
While history doesn't exactly repeat itself, it certainly does echo. Today's presidential candidates face tough questions about many of the same issues that past presidents faced-- a struggling economy, foreign wars, honesty. Starting this week, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE will roll out a series of video clips on social media that look at how past presidents dealt with some of the important issues of the 2012 election.
Stay tuned each Wednesday for the announcement of a new themed collection of video clips on our Facebook page, selected from our acclaimed collection of Presidential biographies.