This June, TVO takes the pulse of Northern Ontario voters, considers the world’s energy needs 20 years into the future, premieres four new documentaries, and heats up with a trip to India.

• The Agenda on the Road: Your Vote 2011 (Sudbury, June 26 and 27)
  What issues are top-of-mind for Northern Ontarians in this fall’s provincial election? TVO’s flagship current affairs program, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, heads to Sudbury to find out.

• The Agenda with Steve Paikin at the Equinox Summit (June 6 – 10)
  On location from Canada's Perimeter Institute (PI) in Waterloo, this special week of Agenda programs explores questions and ideas around our world’s energy future – the theme of the inaugural international conference at PI.

• Documentaries
  Catch four new docs including the world broadcast premiere of Jamie Kastner’s Recessionize! For Fun and Profit, a look at those who find opportunity in the midst of the global economic downturn. And to mark Pride Week in Toronto, Edie and Thea: A Very Long Engagement, which chronicles an enduring love story.
  
  
• India Week: Bollywood and Beyond (June 17 – 26)
  TVO presents a week-long, multimedia showcase of Indian cinema and culture to coincide with the International Indian Film Academy’s annual weekend and awards event, held this year in Toronto.

CURRENT AFFAIRS

The Agenda on the Road: Your Vote 2011

Sudbury
Sunday June 26, 2011 – AgendaCamp public workshop
Monday June 27, 2011 at 8 pm ET – Live on-location broadcast
Venues to be announced

Register now at yourvote2011.ca

This month, it’s Northern Ontario’s turn to build the citizens’ agenda for the October 6 Ontario election when TVO’s flagship current affairs program, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, heads to Sudbury for the next stop in the five-city Your Vote 2011 tour.

Bringing together engaged citizens from all walks of life, the Your Vote 2011 tour asks Ontarians to define the ideas and topics they want to see addressed in the provincial election. The two-day Sudbury visit features the AgendaCamp public workshop on Sunday June 26, which will shape the live, on-location broadcast of The Agenda with Steve Paikin the following night at 8 pm.

Those interested in participating in the AgendaCamp or obtaining free audience tickets for the live broadcast are invited to register now at yourvote2011.ca.

With previous tour stops in Ottawa and Hamilton—where area citizens rated energy policy as the top voter concern—the Your Vote 2011 tour continues in Niagara (May 15 and 16), Sudbury (June 26 and 27), and the GTA in September.

For five seasons, The Agenda with Steve Paikin has provided Ontario with thought-provoking, insightful analysis of current affairs, exploring multiple perspectives on the big issues of the day with in-depth debates and stimulating one-on-one conversations. On March 3, 2011, The Agenda with Steve Paikin marked a significant milestone with its 1000th program.

The Agenda with Steve Paikin at the Equinox Summit: Energy 2030

Live broadcasts from Perimeter Institute in Waterloo
Monday June 6 to Friday June 10, 2011 at 8 pm ET
Produced by TVO  

Climate change. Peak oil. A rapidly growing population… How will our world be affected by these challenges 20 years from now? What if the efforts we’re taking now aren’t enough? How can we use cutting-edge technologies to create a cleaner, more sustainable energy future?

This month, the inaugural Equinox Summit: Energy 2030 at Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo will gather the world’s foremost science experts and industry leaders around these questions. And TVO, as presenting media partner, will be there to engage Ontarians in this important global conversation.

From Monday June 6 to Friday June 10 at 8 pm, TVO’s flagship current affairs program, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, will present a week of live, on-location broadcasts from Perimeter Institute’s Mike Lazaridis Theatre of Ideas. Each program will feature energy experts who will discuss and debate today’s energy issues. Guests will be announced the day of the event and members of the public are invited to be part of the studio audience.

TVO will also provide access to summit events through streaming at tvo.org. More details will be announced in the weeks ahead.

DOCUMENTARIES

Recessionize! For Fun and Profit! - World Broadcast Premiere
Wednesday June 1, 2011 at 9 pm ET
60 minutes
Directed by Jamie Kastner
Produced by Cave 7 Productions in association with TVO

As a proud supporter of the Ontario documentary filmmaking community, TVO is pleased to present the world broadcast premiere of Toronto director Jamie Kastner’s latest offering. 

In Recessionize! For Fun and Profit!, Kastner (Kike Like Me) sets off on a black-comic road trip through California, Europe and Dubai to meet those who manage to turn the world economic crisis into opportunity.  The quirky cast, at times funny, absurd and heartrending, range from kids at “Camp Millionaire” and Berlin prostitutes offering eco-discounts, to the owners of a French hotel promising a hamster experience. The present-day journey is interwoven with ironic accounts of the financial solutions people resorted to during the Great Depression. Recessionize! For Fun And Profit! tells a unique, bittersweet tale that touches on the universal ironies of modern market-guided existence.

Children of the Park – North American Premiere
Wednesday June 8, 2011 at 9 pm ET
60 minutes
Produced by Rayo Films in co-production with Cobra Films, Daggewood Films and ITVS International

In Managua, Nicaragua, teenager Sujeylin Aguilar raises her newborn daughter Karla on the same streets she has been calling home for the past eight years. Based in a city park and part of a larger group of youngsters, mother and baby struggle to reach the little one’s first birthday. Children of the Park offers an intense personal story about second generation street children.

You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo – TVO Premiere
Wednesday June 15, 2011 at 9 pm ET
100 minutes
Directed by Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez
Produced by Les Films Adobe Inc.

In October 2002 15-year-old Canadian Omar Khadr was imprisoned in Guantánamo Bay Prison for allegedly killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. Four months later, Khadr received his first visit from Canadians—a team from the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). Based on seven hours of security camera footage declassified in 2008 by the Canadian courts, You Don’t Like the Truth shows the CSIS interrogation of Khadr at Guantánamo Bay.

The raw prison footage is accompanied by commentary from Khadr’s lawyers, cellmates and family members as well as psychiatrists, a former US interrogator and former foreign minister of Canada, Bill Graham. They watch as Khadr’s initial hope—that the Canadians’ visit would lead to a break in his case—gives way to despondency as it becomes apparent to Khadr that clearing his name is not the purpose of CSIS’ visit.

Edie and Thea: A Very Long Engagement - Canadian Premiere
Wednesday June 29, 2011 at 9 pm ET
60 minutes
Directed by Susan Muska and Greta Ólafsdóttir
Produced by Bless Bless Productions

After sharing their lives for 42 years, feisty and delightful lesbian couple Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer are finally getting married. Soon after they met in New York’s West Village in the early 1960s, they became “engaged,” though the idea of a civil marriage for lesbian and gay couples was unthinkable at the time.

This touching documentary charts Edie and Thea’s love story through four decades of personal and political challenges, from the pre-Stonewall gay scene and protests, to estranged families and fear of exposure at work. Throughout it all, these remarkable women share a magnetic attraction and an extraordinary commitment to each other. While their home state of New York still does not recognize same-sex marriage, they travel to Toronto in 2007 to be married by Harvey Brownstone, Canada’s first openly gay judge.

INDIA WEEK: BOLLYWOOD AND BEYOND

June 17 – 26

As one of the most multicultural cities in the world, Toronto is home to number of diverse communities, including South Asians – the city’s largest visible minority. It’s a fitting location for this year’s International Indian Film Academy annual weekend and awards event (June 23 – 25), a celebration of Indian cinema. Leading up to this event, TVO presents a week-long, multimedia festival of films, documentaries and current affairs programs that showcase Indian film and culture.

The Interviews
“A Bollywood Wedding”
Friday June 17 at 10:30 pm
Produced by TVO

Saturday Night at the Movies’  filmmaker series explores the wedding tradition in contemporary Indian culture through the 2001 film Monsoon Wedding. Featuring Wedding composer Mychael Danna, film critics Brian Johnson and Katrina Onstad, and Weddingbells Magazine editor-in-chief Alison McGill.

Saturday Night at the Movies
“Bollywood Night at the Movies” – NEW!
Saturday June 18, 2011 starting at 8 pm ET

For the first time ever, TVO’s long-running film anthology series focuses its lens on Bollywood cinema with an evening of films that promise a night of music, dance and drama. In between the films, The Interviews explores the popularity, misconceptions, vast storytelling style and international influence of the Bollywood genre.

Wake Up Sid (2009)
In this song-filled rom-com from director Ayan Mukherjee, a spoiled, 20-something slacker (Ranbir Kapoor) living off his father’s fortune is in for a big wakeup call after failing his college exams and falling for an ambitious, aspiring writer (Konkona Sen Sharma).

The second film is to be announced.

Allan Gregg in Conversation
Fridays at 10 pm ET
Produced by TVO

Kasi Rao (June 17) – Premiere
A leading Canadian consultant on India to government and public- and private-sector organizations, Rao talks about how we can improve trade, social and cultural relations with one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

Russell Peters (June 24) 
The Canadian funnyman and author of Call Me Russell talks about his Anglo-Indian roots, his childhood in Brampton, Ontario, and his rise to fame.

For more insights on Indian culture and history, viewers can review an online miniseries of past Allan Gregg interviews touching on these themes at tvo.org. Look for:

- Salman Rushdie on his family ties to Kashmir and the India-Pakistani conflict over the region
- Indian author Gita Mehta on modern India
- Canadian author M. G. Vassanji on rediscovering his roots in India
- Filmmaker Deepa Mehta on making movies in Canada and India
- Indian-Canadian novellist Anita Rau Badami on her book, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?, about the 1985 Air India bombing      

Pink Saris – Canadian Premiere
Wednesday June 22, 2011 at 9 pm ET
100 minutes
Directed by Kim Longinotto
A Channel 4 Production

In Pink Saris, director Kim Longinotto (Sisters in Law, Rough Aunties) examines the plight of rural underclass women in India as she follows the work of Sampat Pal, the leader of an unlikely band of activists.

Pal was married as a pre-pubescent girl into a family that made her work hard, beat her, then forced her out of her village for being disobedient. Today, as the head of the Gulabi Gang (the Pink Gang), she’s out to get justice for other ostracized, abused women and girls in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

“When a man does wrong, give him a beating,” she tells Renu, a 15-year-old girl whose husband has abandoned her and who is being raped by her father-in-law. There’s also Rekha, a 14-year-old “untouchable” who is three months pregnant and homeless – unable to marry her unborn child’s father because of her low caste.

While she boldly positions herself into the centre of various family dramas, Pal herself is a vulnerable figure: she has family pressures of her own to deal with and a growing clan of dependents she’s struggling to support. Still, Pink Saris reverberates with hope and empowerment against the odds.

Also during TVO’s India Week:

India with Sanjeev Bhaskar –  Fridays June 17 – July 8, 2011 at 7 pm ET
The British-born actor sets out to get under the skin of modern India in this four-part series. From the deserts of Rajasthan and tea plantations of Darjeeling to the Himalayas, the Ganges River and into Pakistan, his journey takes him on a personal mission to find the ancestral homeland that his family left behind.

The Holier It Gets – Sunday June 26, 2011 at 11 pm ET
In this award-winning documentary, filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal (The True Meaning of Pictures, Manufactured Landscapes) journeys from Canada to India with her siblings and husband to fulfill her father's final wish – to spread his ashes in the Ganges River.