Center for the Study of Global Change

About

Martha Foster is an anthropologist and film curator who has worked in all aspects of documentary film production and distribution. She is the founder and President/CEO of Living Earth Television (LETV), a nonprofit organization based in the USA dedicated to intercultural education through documentary film and television. LETV is currently working with PBS World to adapt Chinese documentaries for national broadcast, with PBS station WTIU as co-producer.

Martha has traveled extensively in China since 1999, working with documentary production staffs at major television stations around the country and lecturing at many universities, as well participating in festivals and screening American documentaries for live audiences in several cities. In 2010, she led the American Documentary Showcase’s first delegation to China, as a documentary expert for the US Department of State, and secured Fulbright funding for LETV from the American Embassy in Beijing to continue its work on documentary exchange with China.

As a staff producer for WTTW Public Television in Chicago, Martha won five Emmy awards and an additional fifteen nominations for her work on the documentary series Chicago Stories. She is a Senior Consultant to the Western Branch of the Documentary Television Academic Committee of the China Television Artists Association. She has programmed intercultural documentary series for the Smithsonian Institution and the Field Museum of Chicago, as well as for numerous film festivals, and founded and directed the Windy City International Documentary Festival in Chicago.