Lives Worth Living Documentary on PBS

Dear Colleagues:

Rarely in the history of media has a documentary captured the authentic voices of disability leaders as they reframe the debate on the disability rights movement in America. This October 27 premiere of Lives Worth Living coincides with National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and gives “Independent Lens” a whole new meaning as this film recalibrates the focus that chronicles the Independent Living Movement.

This film is for everyone with – and without - disabilities. We encourage students to watch and discuss in school; employees to watch (with their Employee Resource Groups); families to experience it with friends. Blog about it, talk about it.

Let PBS know this is the kind of authentic programming that is important.

Lives Worth Living IS the film worth watching!

Lead On.....

Tari

Tari Hartman Squire, CEO

EIN SOF Communications, Inc.

"We Mean Business"

11601 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 500

Los Angeles, CA 90025

310-650-0595 - mobile

310-473-5954 - office

Tari@EINSOFcommunications.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT

Voleine Amilcar, ITVS 415-356-8383 x 244 voleine_amilcar@itvs.org

Mary Lugo 770-623-8190 lugo@negia.net

Cara White 843-881-1480 cara.white@mac.com

For downloadable images, visit http://pressroom.pbs.org

LIVES WORTH LIVING Premieres on the PBS Series INDEPENDENT LENS

Thursday, October 27 at 10 PM During

National Disability Employment Awareness Month

Powerful Documentary Chronicles the History of America’s Disability Rights Movement

While there are over 54 million Americans living with disabilities, Lives Worth Living is the first television history of their decades-long struggle for equal rights. Produced and directed by Eric Neudel, Lives Worth Living is a window into a world inhabited by people with an unwavering determination to live their lives like everyone else, and a look back into a past when millions of Americans lived without access to schools, employment, apartment buildings, and public transportation – a way of life unimaginable today. Lives Worth Living premieres on the Emmy® Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens, on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 10 PM (check local listings) to coincide with National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

Lives Worth Living traces the development of the disability rights movement from its beginning following World War II, when thousands of disabled veterans returned home, through its burgeoning in the 1960s and 1970s, when it began to adopt the tactics of other social movements. Told through interviews with the movement’s pioneers, legislators, and others, Lives Worth Living explores how Americans with a wide variety of disabilities — including blind, deaf, physical, intellectual and psychiatric — banded together to change public perception and policy. Through demonstrations and legislative battles, the disability rights community finally secured equal civil rights with the 1990 passage and signing into law of the Americans with Disabilities Act, one of the most transformative pieces of civil rights legislation in American history.