Redford teams with ex-eBay head to fund PBS series
By MIKE ANTONUCCI
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Believe it or not, there are people who don't think that the only way for Silicon
Valley and Hollywood to get together is through technology.
Jeff Skoll, the billionaire former president of eBay, and actor Robert Redford have teamed up for
projects designed around philanthropy and filmmaking. One of the results is The New
Heroes, a PBS documentary series. The series, which focuses on a globe-spanning
group of "social entrepreneurs" who want to use business strategies to finance nonprofit goals,
epitomizes a longtime Redford ideal of using film on behalf of cultural and humanitarian causes.
In Skoll, who founded the Skoll Foundation and has overseen its growth to more than $500 million in assets, Redford has found the kind of techwealthy social activist who is giving life to initiatives that often never used to get off the ground. Redford, 67, is the host and one of the
narrators of The New Heroes. "When you see examples of individuals," Redford said, " ... working against impossible odds in
extremely impoverished situations doing something out of their own conviction and courage that is making a difference ... that can be
inspirational to others."
Among the people featured in The New Heroes is Kailash Satyarthi, who infiltrates slave-labor
camps in India, trying to avoid detection from the thugs who run them, and bring families back to a
protected village where the children are given education and job training.
Skoll's foundation (www.skollfoundation.org) invested $1.7 million in the development and
production of the four-hour series. Skoll and Redford say their collaboration is
evolving in a variety of ways and includes Skoll's support for Redford's Sundance Institute, best
known for the Sundance Film Festival.
"We have a partnership," Skoll said, "creating a company around documentaries, which we
haven't really talked about much in public, but which we think is going to be an important new
voice in bringing emerging documentary filmmakers into the public eye."
Redford said one of the key objectives will be the theatrical release of documentaries, not just
distribution through broadcast or cable TV. Long frustrated by an inability to interest media
corporations in projects that weren't considered commercial enough to satisfy "the bottom line,"
Redford said he wants to open avenues for filmmaking to be "more of a cultural exchange"
instead of "just straight entertainment."
On a slightly different tack, Skoll founded Participant Productions last year — a company
largely dedicated to creating major motion pictures that would promote social change.
Redford said his association with Skoll on the potential of social entrepreneurship is "a natural
hookup," and Skoll said, "The point is we share a commitment to the power of film to make a
difference."
And in their expanding partnership, that's thebottom line.