Read Sacred Land Blog from Film Director Toby McLeod and Team
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PBS Broadcasts Begin!
Standing on Sacred Ground is being broadcast on PBS stations all over the United States in May, as part of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. For a full broadcast schedule visit our film website.The key “national broadcast” will start Sunday, May 17 at 9pm ET on The WORLD Channel. Friends in the San Francisco Bay…
New Video: Tar Sands Map Rap
In our film, Profit and Loss, we have four brief scenes of Mike Mercredi explaining a giant wall map of the Alberta tar sands that he and his colleague Lionel Lepine created for their Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation tribal government. The clips we use in the film are about 20 seconds each, and like all…
Yes, We Are Coming to Public Television!
We are thrilled to announce that the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) has accepted all four episodes of Standing on Sacred Ground for broadcast distribution. Public television stations nationwide will have the opportunity to schedule the films for broadcast starting this spring. Some stations may show episodes as early as April to celebrate Earth Day.…
Sacred Sites and Biodiversity
Please check out our new film clip “Sacred Sites and Biodiversity,” which contains three scenes from Standing on Sacred Ground—from Australia, Papua New Guinea and Ethiopia. Over the years we’ve frequently been asked the challenging question, “What is the tangible value of sacred places?” Our scientific, materialistic culture demands proof. These three film scenes answer…
Transcendental Flute Ceremony Reborn in Papua New Guinea
When we filmed the canoe ceremony in Bosmun village on the Ramu River in Papua New Guinea, there was an all night debate about whether we would be allowed to film the transcendental flute players who started playing at midnight heading into the final day of the four-day ceremony. They play inside a thatched hut,…
Screening at Hawai`i State Capitol
On Wednesday, August 20 at 6pm, I Ola Kanaloa will be screening our film segment on Kanaloa Kaho`olawe at the Hawai`i State Capitol, to launch the presentation and discussion of a new draft Strategic Plan for Kanaloa Kaho`olawe. The 15-year plan focuses on ecological and spiritual healing of the sacred island after 50 years of…
Screenings in Sabah and Papua New Guinea
Awakening one night in the middle of editing the Standing on Sacred Ground series, I tossed and turned and worried about the challenges of telling eight, long, complex stories in a society with an ever-shrinking attention span. I asked myself, “Who is going to watch four hours of documentary film?” The answer came within seconds:…
On Stage with Winona
It was a cold afternoon in DC, gray skies but no rain, perfect weather to drive a crowd into an auditorium to watch four hours of films. The Capitol dome sat quiet and irrelevant off to the northeast, spitting distance from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. For me, NMAI is the crucible…