After a second hit season on History Television Canada, Kensington has begun prep work for another batch of Museum Secrets shows, to roll out early in 2013. Our terrific production team is back, many of the same people from last year, digging up more secrets ‘dark and strange’.

In Season 2, we travelled the world to seek out the extraordinary objects and dramatic moments from history that lie hidden inside the world’s finest museums. We love making these shows and it seems audiences love watching them – the numbers of people who’ve found Museum Secrets has grown steadily in Canada, the UK, Australia and around the world, proving that museums are anything but boring!

Along with our broadcasts, museumsecrets.tv continues to be a popular destination to explore the great stories from the series through videos and interactive features.

Stay tuned to the Museum Secrets blog and website, for production news and reports from the field as we produce Season 3 of Museum Secrets.

On March 1st Museum Secrets hosted several dozen bloggers in Toronto for a screening of Museum Secrets: Inside the Pergamon and Neues Museums, Berlin. Guests were also treated to a Viking sword fight demonstration and played trivia games to test their knowledge of the episode.

During the broadcast guests tweeted with viewers watching the show at home on History Television and hundreds of tweets with the #MuseumSecrets hashtag were generated … An indicator of the show’s growing online community.

After the Viking sword fight demonstration, attendees tried on Viking gear and tested their moves!

(They were getting a preview for the Viking story that appeared in the Berlin Museum episode airing later that night.)

Brock Groombridge of backpackwithbrock.com and Mike Corey of Kickthegrind.tv tested their Viking fighting skills.

Along with director David Langer, cinematographer Mark Caswell and music composers Eric Cadesky and Nick Dyer also joined in the festivities.

Eric Cadesky, one of two Museum Secrets composers, tried on a Viking costume.

Special thanks to our trivia prize sponsors: the Royal Ontario Museum, Medieval Times, MAC and Steam Whistle, and to Paulhillier.com for the photos.

Stay tuned to the Museum Secrets facebook page for the latest show news.

On Thursday March 22nd, Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits has its New York City premiere screening at an event being hosted by by the International Harm Reduction Development Program of the Open Society Foundations.

Museum Secrets, our TV series now in its second season for History Television Canada, has been selected in this year’s History Makers Awards, which recognizes the very best in History, Current Affairs and Non-Fiction programming, across TV and digital platforms. 

In the Most Innovative Production category, Museum Secrets is nominated with Dambusters, Wartorn 1860-2010, Horrible Histories, Back from the Dead/Warrior Graveyard, and A Balloon for Allah. All of the projects are recognized for their originality in the use of new editing, directing styles and technical enhancements.

Along with Museum Secrets for Best Interactive Production are 4 other innovative cross-platform projects; Truth and Lies: The last days of Osama bin Laden, Exile Without End: Palestinians in Lebanon, Mission US – The Stream: Bahrain’s Political Future, and Storming Juno Interactive. Check out these projects and let us know what you think.

The History Makers Awards ceremony takes place on Thursday, January 26, 2012, and winners will be announced during History Makers International conference in New York City.

After our interviews with Magic Johnson, The Honourable Roméo  A. Dallaire and Michel Chikwanine, we are busy in the edit suite for our We Day video project.

We’ll update you on the status of our project here, but for now, take a look at a few photos: The Kitchener Memorial Auditorium was packed, and Magic Johnson, Roméo  A. Dallaire and Mia Farrow gave inspirational speeches to a very enthusiastic audience.

All photos courtesy of Free The Children.

Kensington Producers, Robert Lang and Kirsten Scollie, along with Director of Photography Henry Less, head to Waterloo on Nov. 16 for We Day, where they’ll be surrounded by 6000 young people who believe in positive change making.

Their itinerary starts off with a shoot at the event lead by the cofounders of Free The Children, Craig and Marc Kielburger, who will be joined on stage by luminaries including Lieutenant-General, The Honourable Roméo  A. Dallaire, author of award-winning book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda; Basketball Hall-of-Famer legend and philanthropist, Magic Johnson;  Award winning actress and activist, Mia Farrow; and Speaker, activist and daughter of Former Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Naomi Tutu.

Kensington’s team will also film interviews with Magic Johnson, and Roméo  A. Dallaire with Michel Chikwanine: a former child soldier, motivational speaker and children’s rights activist.

For more information about the event taking place, visit WeDay.com.

Stay tuned to our blog for updates about the series of videos we’re producing for We Day.  You can also follow our twitter feed, where we hope to post photos from the event tomorrow.

We’ve just returned from our second shoot with We Day. This time we went to Vancouver with Craig and Marc Kielburger to continue production on a series of videos that aim to inspire young people to create positive change.

We Day once again had massive attendance, with 18,000 youth, educators and friends, enthusiastically cheering the celebrated speakers and performers at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver. This We Day featured inspiring talks and music by, among others: Mikhail Gorbachev, Mia Farrow, Shaq, Holly Branson (Sir Richard Branson’s accomplished daughter) Hedley and Shawn Desman.

After the big event, we filmed interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev, Shaq and Sir Richard Branson with his daughter, Holly. They spoke intimately about their lives, the obstacles they’ve encountered and how they were driven to make a difference in the world.

Next week, we’ll start editing the video profiles which will be used for broadcast and in schools across North America.

Coming up next – On November 16, we head to Waterloo, ON., for our last We Day shoot. The event features Magic Johnson, Romeo Dallaire and others.

The Museum Secrets production team has just returned from Berlin and is currently in Vienna, shooting the last out of a total of eight brand new episodes that will air on History Television Canada in early 2012.

We previously announced the first two museums produced for this season – National Archaeological Museum of Athens and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Here are the next four museums for the upcoming season:

The Topkapi Palace, Istanbul

We went to this city of mosques and bazaars, to find the secrets of the Ottomans, who reigned at the splendid Topkapi Palace for nearly 400 years (1465-1856).

Read more here.

National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City

At this museum which contains the world’s most significant archaeological and anthropological artifacts from the pre-Colombian era of Mexico, the director of the episode, Rebecca Snow and Executive Producer, Robert Lang, were able to explore Mexico’s history, from the first millennium up to the Spanish conquest in 1521.

Read more about the museum and the episode here.

Imperial War Museum, London

At London’s multi-branch museum we discovered some little-known stories of 20th Century wars. We discovered a diverse group of artifacts that reveal stories of war through the people who experienced it.

You can read some of Director Mary Anne Alton’s thoughts here.

American Museum of Natural History, New York City

At this renowned museum, which was featured in the 2006 movie Night at the Museum staring Ben Stiller, we uncovered how the bright and sunny version of Africa that we see in the Lion King owes its existence to a hall created at the museum in 1936. We explore this and five other fascinating stories which you can read more about here.

Stay tuned here for another update on our production of the last two Season 2 Museum Secrets programs.

After successful broadcasts of Raw Opium: Pain, Pleasure, Profits in Australia on SBS and in Germany and France on ZDF Arte, our 2-part documentary will have its Canadian Broadcast Premiere this Wednesday, October 5th on TVO, along with a live chat on TVO.org.

Watch Raw Opium on TVO this Wednesday

Part 1: Wednesday Oct. 5, 9 PM EST.
Part 2: Wednesday Oct. 12, 9 PM EST.

• Live stream of the broadcast (open across Canada) on http://TVO.org/rawopium.
• Live chat (open around the world) on http://TVO.org/rawopium.

Concurrent with our broadcast, TVO and Kensington are hosting an online live chat during the broadcast in which a special guest will comment on key moments in the film and respond to viewers’ thoughts as they come in.

A major story-thread in the film focuses on Derek, an IV drug user on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the InSite clinic which has been so central to his life. So we expect a major topic of the chat will relate to last week’s Supreme Court decision ordering the Conservative Government to allow Insite to stay open.

As with our audience and panel discussions after our theatrical film screenings, we hope the online discussion will come from a broad spectrum of opinion about harm reduction and drug policy reform – it’s especially timely with the Conservative Crime Bill currently before the House.

Please Join Us!

Where: http://TVO.org/Rawopium

When: Oct. 5, 9 – 10 PM EST (Part 2: Oct. 12, 9 – 10  PM EST)

Special Guests:

Part 1: Richard Elliott, Executive Director, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network.

Richard is a member of the International Advisory Committee of the International Centre for Human Rights and Drug Policy. He has authored numerous reports, papers and articles on a range of legal and human rights issues related to HIV/AIDS, appeared before legislative committees, taught or lectured at several law schools, and presented extensively on HIV-related human rights issues across the country and internationally.

Richard Elliott and the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network defended Insite at the Supreme Court of Canada in May 2011, in the case in which the Conservative Government tried to shut Insite clinic down.

Part 2: Eugene Oscapella, Lawyer, Founder, Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy.

Eugene Oscapella is a recipient of the Kaiser Foundation National Award for Excellence in Public Policy for his work over the past two decades on drug policy reform. For almost a quarter century he has written credible research and clear policy advice on a range of issues: privacy, human rights, drug policy, medical-legal subjects, intelligence, national security and criminal justice. He lectures in criminology at the University of Ottawa and frequently lectures elsewhere on privacy and drug policy issues.  His research has been published in Canada and abroad.

In 2009 he spoke to the Senate Committee about his view against a crime bill proposed by the Conservative Government. He currently opposes the new crime bill before the House of Commons.

Eugene Oscapella appears in Raw Opium.

After a successful shoot of the guests at We Day in Toronto, Kensington is looking forward to shooting in-depth interviews with all of the luminaries in Toronto, and with Mikhail Gorbachev, Mia Farrow, Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal in Vancouver and Waterloo next month. Check out some of our photos from We Day Toronto.

The major news popping up on news networks about Toronto’s We Day concerned singer-songwriter Nelly Furtado’s donation of $1-million for the Free the Children charity. Her donation was from money she earned by performing for former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s clan. The Globe and Mail reported that although the money was earned through ‘unusual circumstances,’ Free the Children were happy to accept the generous donation and look forward to doing good work with it. They plan to build a school for girls in Kenya.