ABOUT THE PRODUCERS
Media & Policy Center Foundation & Wiland-Bell Productions, LLC - Principals
The Media & Policy Center Foundation was founded to explore issues of social welfare, public policy, eduation, the environment and healthcare to inform, challenge and engage a responsive citizenry. They endeavor to encourage meaningful debate and participation across the political, social and economic spectrum by using televised and coordinated multi-media projects.
Wiland-Bell Productions, LLC is a multiple award-winning media production company, specializing in the design and implementation of socially relevant projects in an entertaining and enlightening context.
Harry Wiland’s and Dale Bell’s individual productions have won one Academy Award (“Woodstock”), five Emmys, one Peabody, two Christophers, two Cine Golden Eagles, four Childrens’ Acts, among other awards and nominations. Their collective films for PBS, networks, cable, and cinema represent an array of styles including journalism, documentary, dramatic feature film, performance, and industrial. (“National Geographic Specials,” “Kennedy Center Tonight,” “The Chemical People,” “WonderWorks,” and “Johnny Cash.”)
In 2000, together with The Motion Picture & Television Fund care facility based in Woodland Hills, CA, Wiland and Bell produced a television special, Kevin Spacey and Friends, honoring the lives of several of the facility’s residents from the entertainment community.
Wiland and Bell’s project, And Thou Shalt Honor…Caring for Our Parents, Spouses, and Friends is a 2-hour primetime TV series for PBS, now viewed by more than 16 million people. A community grassroots outreach campaign, and a companion book published by Rodale Press are important extensions of the program. The web site can be found at www.atsh.org. To replicate the caregiving model and mission, the company created a Caregiver Resource Center Video Library as well as marketing sequels. Additionally, the company is producing a 15-city series of Caregiving Town Hall Meetings for PBS to enlighten and empower caregivers and inform the audience about services, providers, benefits and programs available in their communities. One of the town hall meetings was held in conjunction with the mid-summer Governors meeting in Seattle in July 2004; another in the midst of the Democratic National Convention in Boston in the same month. The series also featured a National Town Hall Meeting in Washington D.C., broadcast on PBS stations in Summer/Fall 2005.
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