Since 1987, Testing the Limits has strived to increase public awareness of AIDS and related issues through its critically acclaimed educational programs and video archive. Testing the Limits' films and videotapes have aired on public television and HBO and screened in theaters across the country. These programs have been distributed to hundreds of schools and universities for classroom discussions as well as to AIDS organizations for volunteer training, community organizing and public conferences. Key productions include Testing the Limits: NYC (1987), A Testing the Limits Guide to Safer Sex (1988), and Voices from the Front (1992). In addition, Testing the Limits has amassed a comprehensive video archive of public forums, demonstrations, and interviews of AIDS and lesbian/gay activists that would have otherwise gone undocumented. Television journalists, independent filmmakers, and community organizations regularly call upon this archive for their productions.
David Meieran has executive produced, produced, and directed a number of critically acclaimed documentaries. In 1987, he co-founded Testing the Limits, a non-profit video production collective focusing on AIDS and related issues. Meieran was executive producer for Ballot Measure 9 (1994), a feature-length documentary about Oregon's anti-gay initiative that won awards at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals. He was also executive producer for the Gay and Lesbian Emergency Media Campaign, which produced the compilation videotape, Sacred Lies/Civil Truths (1993) for Deep Dish TV. Among the Testing the Limits programs he produced and directed is Voices from the Front (1992), an award-winning feature-length documentary focusing on the self-empowerment of people with AIDS that was broadcast on HBO/Cinemax and released theatrically world-wide. Meieran served as the director of fiscal sponsorship at Media Network, a nationally renowned media arts center which has sponsored over 200 independent social-issue film and video projects. Earlier, he was the program director for the Living with AIDS Fund and a consultant to the National AIDS Hotline.
Born in London in 1960 to recently arrived West Indian immigrants, Isaac Julien is one of the world's most well known gay filmmakers. Julien worked initially with London's Sankofa Film Workshop, an independent media workshop, producing a number of inventive and lyrical docudramas principally for Britain's Channel 4, including the award-winning Looking for Langston and The Passion of Remembrance. His subsequent films include the acclaimed feature Young Soul Rebels and the recent documentary The Darker Side of Black, which traces the origins of gangsta rap to Jamaican dance hall culture and reggae. Julien, who is also a teacher and theorist, is renowned for work that explores culture through the trinity of race, class, and gender.
Craig Paull recently produced Steve McLean's Postcards from America, a feature film on the early life of the late artist David Wojnarowicz. He has also produced Tom Kalin's Nation and was associate producer for Todd Haynes' Dottie Gets Spanked, part of ITVS's acclaimed TV Families series. Additionally, Paull produced a documentary on AIDS in rural America for ABC which aired in 1994.
A coordinating producer of Barbara Kopple's Academy Award-winning documentary, American Dream, Cassidy also served as associate producer of the documentaries Casting the First Stone and Frank Perry's On the Bridge, a film about his battle with prostate cancer that aired on PBS this year. Her other documentary credits include the 1993 Emmy-nominated Dream Deceivers, This Little Utopia, and Civil Rights: The Struggle Continues.
The Independent Television Service (ITVS) is a unique creation in American broadcasting. Created in 1989, with offices established in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1991, ITVS was formed to increase the diversity of programming available to public television stations, to bring vision to a medium often dominated by formula, and to brainstorm, recruit, support, and promote the kind of programming that will expand and energize public television as we approach the 21st century. To this end, ITVS solicits innovative proposals from independent producers, selects projects for funding, and then supports, schedules, and promotes them for broadcast on public television.
Established by an act of Congress "to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities," ITVS receives funding -- approximately eight million dollars per year -- through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Upcoming ITVS series include Positive: Life with HIV, a practical, humorous and poignant guide to the needs of those affected and infected by the virus; The Question of Equality; a first-person history of the gay and lesbian movement; The United States of Poetry, a brashly visual documentary series celebrating poetry in everyday lives; and Signal to Noise, a viewer's guide to the television industry.
An award-winning producer whose broadcasting career spans public and commercial sectors, both domestic and international, David Liu joined the ITVS staff in 1994. In addition to a production history that includes the Emmy-winning Big Bird in China, FRONTLINE'S Looking for Mao, and A&E's ACE-nominated Paris Live!, Liu was senior producer of Liberty: Freedom of Expression, part of the ITVS-presented series DECLARATIONS: ESSAYS ON AMERICAN IDEALS, a 1994 INPUT featured presentation. At ITVS, Liu oversees the nearly 90 ITVS-funded single programs and ten series now in various stages of production and public television distribution.
Mark Lipson has been a film and television producer for nearly a decade. In 1985, he produced the feature Almost You and next teamed with director Errol Morris to produce the acclaimed documentary, The Thin Blue Line. Recently, Lipson has been acting as supervising producer for ITVS on three of the organization's upcoming series -- The Question of Equality, The United States of Poetry and Signal to Noise.