Past Productions
See Also:
Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness
A One hour PBS documentary on Independent Lens
Who owns cultural identity? Who controls how a people are represented? Is there a politics of knowledge? This provocative documentary explores these questions through the life and career of one of the most influential anthropologist of the 20th century – Melville J. Herskovits.
Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?
California Newsreel in association with Vital Pictures Inc.
A Four-Hour PBS Series and National Public Engagement Campaign
This four part PBS series crisscrosses the country investigating how the wealth we enjoy, the education we receive, the neighborhoods we live in and the control we have in our lives, determine how well – or how sick – we may be. America is the most unequal of developed nations. The series examines how the gaps between the have’s and everyone else find their way into our bodies.
Race: The Power of an Illusion
A Three-Hour Documentary Series
A Production of California Newsreel
This three part series challenges one of our most fundamental beliefs: that humans are inherently divided into a few distinct biological groups – races. Probing the biological, historical and contemporary assumptions around race, the series unpacks the myth of the geological of race, and how nonetheless race is re-created in our history and social and economic institutions today.
Llewellyn M. Smith
Selected Previous Work
NOVA: Forgotten Genius, WGBH
Producer/director/writer
A 2-hour biography of Dr. Percy Julian, the pioneering industrial chemist and civil rights activist;
American Experience: Reconstruction: The Second Civil War, WGBH
Producer/Director/Writer
3-hour special.” Produced and directed the 90-minute first show “Revolution.”
Winner of the Eric Barnouw Award from the Organization of American Historians (OAH).
American Experience: Jubilee Singers: Sacrifice and Glory, WGBH
Producer/Director /Writer
The story of black teenagers from Fisk University who sang Negro Spirituals around the world after the Civil War.
Africans in America; America’s Journey Through Slavery, WGBH
Project Director
A six-hour Emmy and Peabody award-winning series. Producer/director for the fourth and final 90-minute film in the series, “Judgment Day.”
Eyes On the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, Blackside, Inc.
Associate Producer
Tells the story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. Winner of an Emmy, DuPont-Columbia and Peabody Award, and an Academy Award Nomination.
Christine Herbes-Sommers
Selected Previous Work
Joan Robinson: One Woman’s Story.
Producer.
A two and a half hour PBS documentary chronicling one woman’s struggle with and death from ovarian cancer. Winner, DuPont Columbia Journalism Award
The Advisory.
Producer and Media Director.
A multi-part documentary telling the year long story of one class of high risk students and their teacher. Centerpiece of video conference network for The Big Pictures Schools
A Biography of America.
Senior producer.
26-part survey of events in American history featuring top historians throughout the country. For WGBH/Boston and the Annenberg Channel.
Under This Sky: Elizabeth cady Stanton in Kansas.
Executive Producer.
A 60 minute PBS drama telling the story of Stanton and Susan’ B. Anthony’s fight for the women’s vote in Kansas 1965.