July 2011 - Idaho Public Television

This film offers a record
of Western ranch life
on July 5. It is a
filmed portrait of
a world in which
nature and culture,
animals and humans
are on intimate terms
— and sometimes
violently at odds. The
film follows some of
the West’s last modernday
horsemen, who lead
flocks of sheep into the
scenic and often dangerous
mountains of Montana’s
rugged Absaroka-Beartooth
range north of Yellowstone
National Park to fatten them
on sweet summer grass.
The film presents a portrait
of the American West
where traditional ways are
threatened in a world of
harsh beauty and arduous
labor, and humans still
work in rugged intimacy
with nature.
Airs Tuesdays at 10:00 p.m. MT/PT
See it in HD at 8:00/7:00 p.m. and 11:00/10:00 p.m. MT/PT
The documentary series with a “point of view” continues its 24th season this month with four new shows
as filmmakers travel to Montana, Southeast Asia, South America and Africa to tell their stories.
Sweetgrass
Enemies of
the People
Airing on July 12, this film follows Thet Sambath, an investigative
journalist who lost his family during the slaughter of nearly 2
million people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.
He spends a decade gaining the trust of men and women who
perpetrated the massacres of the “killing fields” of Cambodia,
which have remained largely unexplained — until now. Sambath
and co-director Rob Lemkin record shocking testimony from
the common foot soldiers who slit throats, and from Communist
leader Pol Pot’s notorious right-hand man. The result is a riveting
account of modern horror wrapped in the beautiful imagery of
rural Cambodia. Enemies of the People has won more than 20
awards, including a special Sundance Jury Prize.
Biblioburro:
The Donkey Library (July 19) follows
39-year-old Luis Soriano and his traveling library. Soriano is
surely the most famous resident of La Gloria, a small
town in a rural area of northern
Colombia plagued
by poverty, crime and
armed insurrection. But
his fame has little to
do with guns, drugs or
politics. His reputation
rests on two sturdy
donkeys named Alfa and
Beto, his own two feet,
and his willingness to
spend weekends tramping
through rugged and
dangerous backcountry
to bring a circulating
library of donated books
to the children in some of
Colombia’s poorest and most
remote towns and villages.
Mugabe
and the
White
African
This documentary, which airs July 26,
is the chilling account of one white African
family’s efforts to fight its government. The Campbell family of
Zimbabwe may have been white people determined to hold on to
their farm, but they are not in the mold of colonialists hanging on
to land extorted from blacks. They were among the native-born
whites who did not flee in 1980 when Zimbabwe achieved full
independence and black majority rule under independence fighter
Robert Mugabe. Embracing the new country, the Campbells
expand their small farm that same year, buying additional land
to create a game preserve, with the full approval of Mugabe.
Twenty years later, however, the Campbells find themselves in
the crosshairs of a brutal land redistribution program enacted by
the same Robert Mugabe.
Sponsors: Boise Weekly, Hotel 43
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idahoptv channels july 2011