This week, the 31st International Wildlife Film Festival is happening in Missoula, Montana. Channel 2's original series "Wild Florida" received two honorable mentions for educational value at the festival this year, and as one of the producers of the series I am excited to attend the festivities and to meet with others in the field of natural history programming. As producers, we often get so wrapped up in the day-to-day grind of deadline pressures that we find ourselves with little time to step back to examine our work and to share ideas with others in our field. Having an opportunity to see what others are working on and to bounce ideas off each other is invaluable to make sure we produce quality programming that is not only entertaining but also of value to you, our audience. Today's focus at the festival is on "Saving our Seas", in particular the environmental pressures our oceans are facing today and how we, as the media, can inform our viewers about important ocean issues. For us Floridians, the oceans play especially important roles in our lives and their continued health and exploration are vital to our economy. Here at Channel 2 we are in the process of trying to find funding for a new series called "Changing Seas" that would explore these types of stories. Today's sessions are particularly beneficial in helping us determine how such a series would best be presented to get out important information in a way that is not only entertaining, but also meets the neeeds of our community.
NATURE: The Gorilla King, airs Sunday, April 20 at 8:00 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami.
King among the mountain gorillas of Rwanda, Titus is one of only 700 of his kind alive today. Dian Fossey, the famed primatologist, was his first human contact, meeting and naming him in August of 1974, when he was just two days old. In the decades that followed, his surroundings have changed beyond recognition, and he has been orphaned, abandoned, surrounded by civil war, poachers, farmers, scientists, disease and new technology. Conservationist Ian Redmond shares his memories of Titus and his extraordinary life and times, from his early days to his rise to power as a silverback. Archival footage documents Titus and his family, as well as a visit from a young David Attenborough and many of the people who have been on the frontlines of the efforts to protect him and all of the gorillas in Rwanda.
Lizards do push-ups for it. Gelada baboons show off their passion-flushed pectorals. Bowerbirds become interior decorators. From dancing spiders to drumming monkeys, the universal urge to mate has led creatures throughout the animal kingdom to evolve elaborate courtship rituals and astonishing anatomy. This program follows passionate wildlife experts around the world and through our own backyards as they use cutting-edge technology and risky field study to discover what makes winners and losers in the animal dating game.
NATURE: What Females Want and Males Will Do, airs Sunday April 6 and 13 at 8:00 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami.
NATURE: Cuba: Wild Island of the Caribbean, airs Sunday, March 30 at 8:00 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami. Protected by its isolation, the wildlife of Cuba has remained naturally preserved, untouched and unexplored. Through a special arrangement with the Cuban government, unprecedented access was granted to film the astonishing diversity of life on the island, much of it virtually unknown until recently. For the first time, the rest of us will have the opportunity to see the iridescent Cuban jewel ant, the bee hummingbird that flies so fast it becomes invisible and the largest colony of Caribbean flamingos in the world.
NATURE: The Desert Lions airs Sunday, January 6 at 8:00pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami. Watch a preview clip here. The world’s most extraordinary population of lions lives in the Namib Desert on Africa’s wild and forbidding Skeleton Coast. Philip Stander, a Namibian carnivore specialist, first spotted these desert lions in the mid-1980s, watching in disbelief as a lioness killed a fur seal in the waves and dragged it five miles inland to feed her cubs. Before he had a chance to study them further, they disappeared; Stander became obsessed with their fate and their story. Twenty years later, the lions reappeared, giving him a second chance to unravel their secrets. Program is presented in high definition.
They’re certainly not the pin-ups of the wild kingdom. Yet from warthogs and tapeworms to vultures and bats, the ugliest of nature’s designs can still be beautiful – even when they aren’t pretty. NATURE reveals the vital functions behind vile forms when The Beauty of Ugly premieres Sunday, November 18, 2007 at 8 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami. Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham is series narrator.
“This is a fun program that’s got something to make everyone squirm,” says Fred Kaufman, executive producer of NATURE. “But it’s also strong on science, explaining the purpose of these features that we often find ghastly.” In the jungles of Borneo, NATURE catches up with the male proboscis monkey, whose preposterous schnoz and its distinctive honk are signs of dominance, used to intimidate rivals that might challenge him for his harem.
Speaking of noses, the fleshy 22-tentacled sniffer of the star-nosed mole might win the blue ribbon for ugliness among tunnelers. But it’s also the secret of its success – super-sensitive to touch, the tentacles allow the star-nosed to hunt 14 times faster than its competition.
In the Valley of the Wolves premieres Sunday, November 4 at 8 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami. In this video, Emmy Award-winning wildlife cinematographer Bob Landis discusses the making of the film, including the ideal circumstances for filming a predation scene; the importance of spending a vast amount of time in the field; the uniqueness of Yellowstone's Druid wolf pack, and more.
Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham narrates "In the Valley of the Wolves," part of the 26th season of "NATURE," the Peabody and Emmy award-winning series.
Rebroadcast on WPBT,
Sunday, Oct. 21st at 8 p.m. and narrated by
actor Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham, "Supersize Crocs"
follows daring reptile expert Romulus Whitaker across three continents
to find out if any monster 20-foot crocodiles still exist in the wild.
Part of the 25th anniversary season of "NATURE," the Peabody and Emmy
Award-winning series
Scientists and bee
experts race to solve an urgent global mystery - the widespread
vanishing of honeybees, an insect crucial to our food supply and
economy - in the "NATURE" season premiere "Silence of the Bees," airing
on WPBT/Channel 2, Sunday, October 28 at 8 p.m. From crop
fields to hi-tech labs, across the northeast U.S., Europe and Asia,
"NATURE" follows the investigation into "Colony Collapse Disorder,"
which portends possible catastrophe - failed businesses, skyrocketing
food prices, unsustainable labor costs, and depleted supplies of
essential crops. Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham
narrates.
After 30 years of protection under the Endangered Species Act, the grizzly bears of Yellowstone National Park have re-learned how to hunt. From Nature's The Good, The Bad, and the Grizzly airing October 14th at 8 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami. Once on the edge of extinction, the grizzly bears of Yellowstone National Park appear to be thriving. Should they now be removed from the protection of the Endangered Species Act? The Good, The Bad, and the Grizzly explores this complex dilemma, asking: how do we balance the needs of an expanding human population with the goal of preserving our wildlife as nature intended? Actor Chris Cooper narrates the film.
Premiering on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami Sunday, Oct. 7 at 8 p.m., "Andes: The Dragon's Back" reveals a wonderland of exotic creatures and extreme climates stretching from the Antarctic to the Amazon.
Academy Award-winning actor F. Murray Abraham narrates the program, part of the 25th anniversary season of NATURE, the Peabody and Emmy Award-winning series produced by Thirteen/WNET New York for PBS. For more information, visit here.
Biologists are on a mission to save Death Valley's most precious treasure --the tiny Devil's Hole Pupfish . From NATURE's Life in Death Valley airing on Sunday, September 2nd at 8 p.m. on WPBT/Channel 2 Miami.
Life in Death Valley captures the simmering cauldron of Death Valley; the hottest, driest place in the US, epic in its beauty but punishing in its brutal extremes. In a scorched landscape marked by endless miles of salt flats, molten rock canyons, and lunar craters, survival is a miracle in itself.
AMERICAN MASTERS - John James Audubon: Drawn From Nature, premieres Wednesday, July 25 at 10pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami. In a dramatic, contradictory story, the man who is synonymous with the American wilderness and conservation movement emerges as the man who probably killed more birds than anyone else in history. Energetic, gifted and vain, Audubon was self-taught and self-made, the illegitimate son of a French sea captain and Haitian servant girl.
An abandoned zebra foal, who
is trapped in a muddy pool, is attracted to the only other creature it
sees, an elephant. From Nature's KALAHARI: THE GREAT THIRSTLAND, airing
Sunday, July 8 at 8pm on WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami. Shot in high-definition, this
film by renowned naturalist filmmaker Tim Liversedge captures the
astonishing ecological spectacle of Kalahari.
Award-winning Nature Documentary Migrates to WPBT/Channel 2 in Miami on Tuesday, June 12 at 8pm.
"The breathtaking cinematography of migrating birds in Jacques Perrin's mystical documentary Winged Migration transports you into an exalted realm..."
— Stephen Holden, New York Times
Amazing cinematography and gorgeous music fill WINGED MIGRATION, a documentary-adventure directed by one of France's most respected actors and producers, Jacques Perrin. Presented with almost no narration and filmed primarily from a bird's perspective, this study of the lives and habits of migrating birds re-creates as nearly as possible the experiences of the birds themselves.
While practically everyone is aware of the fact that birds fly south for the winter, and return home in the spring, few are aware of just how arduous the journey can be. WINGED MIGRATION documents the flight of dozens of different birds as they follow their navigational instincts and make the taxing journey to more temperate climates in the fall.
Employing an impressive variety of aircraft (planes, gliders, helicopters, balloons) and state-of-the-art technology, Perrin and a crew of more than 450 people closely followed bird migrations through 40 countries and each of the seven continents.
“I will always treasure the memory of the first time we achieved this,” Director Jaques Perrin says. “The cameraman was following the movements of the geese, with one hand the assistant pushed away those who came too near the camera: the whole spool of film ran out. Radiant, tears in their eyes, they looked at me, speechless, motionless. Their mastery and the technical result were of minor importance, they had been in the confidence of the birds in flight.” The film covers landscapes that range from the Eiffel Tower and Monument Valley to the remote reaches of the Arctic and the Amazon.”
The first directorial effort for Perrin, WINGED MIGRATION received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary in 2002.
WINGED MIGRATION, directed by Jacques Perrin and produced by Sony Pictures Classics.
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