The massive influx of refugees into Europe presents a challenge for journalists to cover a story that has been saturated in the European media and somehow lost the human element behind the noise of statistics and politics. The voice of refugees themselves can become lost in the clamor and seeing their stories close up and first hand delivers a poignant and valuable perspective.

DW’s Documentaries and Reports is adding a personal angle to the refugee story with #MyEscape, a documentary special that shares what it is like to come to Europe as a refugee. Using videos and photos that refugees took themselves along the way combined with revealing interviews, #MyEscape allows the refugees to tell this important story in their own words.

The international and cultural expertise at DW played a huge role in conducting follow-up interviews in the refugees languages and in establishing an atmosphere of trust where people felt comfortable telling their stories.

#My Escape will air starting February 13 and is produced in cooperation with WDR and Berlin Producers.

A new joint-project from DW, RBB and Berlin Producers is proving just how small the world is. Worldwide Berlin is hoping to create a connection to the more than 80 different Berlins that exist around the globe. Along with a four-part documentary airing in January, viewers can already dive into more than 100 Berlins on an interactive world map – each more colorful and curious than the last. It turns the world into a village, effortlessly eating up kilometers, climates and time zones.

Worldwide Berlin is a global interactive web documentary in the making. It is also the most comprehensive collection of stories from over 100 places worldwide called Berlin. If you want to find out how such a global, grassroots project got started – just take a look at the “making of” segments on the blog.

Classical music is a proud part of the German cultural tradition and bringing this to a world audience is something DW does very well. The DW classical music concert production Schumann at Pier 2 recently won two awards in Asia and altogether has won 12 prestigious awards at international film and TV festivals.

Schumann at Pier 2 was awarded the Gold Panda Award for most innovative film in the anthropology documentary category at the 2013 Sichuan TV Festival, one of Asia’s largest TV festivals. The DW musical documentary was among 5,000 productions from 77 countries which were submitted this year.

The judges said the film, “showed the beauty of romantic music with incentive scenes” with “gorgeous visual tone plus elegant and rhythmic music.” Director Christian Berger said that he was very pleased about winning the award and “it was our goal from the very beginning to present classical music in a contemporary way.”  In Japan the film also won the 2013 Japan Record Academy Award, a prestigious award in Japan given out for classical music productions.
The film is a two-part series that gives takes you inside the rehearsals for a special presentation of Schumann’s four symphonies at Bremen’s Pier2. You can watch the film here online.

Latin America

DW’s Portuguese science magazine Futurando now being broadcast nationwide in Brazil. The educational broadcaster Canal Futura will begin broadcasting DW’s successful Portuguese language science program Futurando on October 10. Canal Futura belongs to Globo, the largest media group in Brazil, and is the first private broadcaster in the country exclusively dedicated to educational programming. The channel has a technical range capable of reaching a potential audience of 94 million people in Brazil through terrestrial broadcasting in Rio de Janeiro and nationwide coverage on satellite, cable and affiliate stations.

A merger uniting the Colombian broadcaster and DW (Latinoamérica) partner UNE-ESM with the digital services provider Tigo has created formidable new presence on the Colombian media market putting the conglomeration in competition with Claro for first place.

Asia
Starting this month, DW’s English language news magazine Journal will be available nationwide in Afghanistan on Saba TV. The private broadcaster focuses on educational programming aimed at a young audience of information seekers. The channel belongs to the Saba Group, the operators of Radio Nawa which currently broadcasts the daily radio news program from DW in Pashto.

A new contract with the Indian public broadcaster Doordashan will place Manthan, a DW Hindi production, on six more of its regional channels.

The Taiwanese IPTV provider Vee Time is now offering DW’s flagship channel in English around the clock on Vee TV.

Middle East
Al Jazeera’s documentary channel has acquired a total of 99 hours of programming from DW Transtel’s portfolio. New programming aimed at the channel’s male target audience including extreme sports and motor sports will accompany formats covering science, medicine, nature, the environment and economic development. The documentary film channel from Al Jazeera broadcasts primarily in Arabic and can be received worldwide via satellite. Their core target area covers the Arab world.

Eastern Europe
Commentary and interviews from DW’s online service in Russian are now being featured on the popular Russian Internet portal Rambler.ru. The new partner website boasts 21 million visitors every month placing it among the most visited Russian language websites on the Internet. Since the beginning of the partnership with Rambler, DW Russian has recorded a clear increase in the number of online users.

The Ukrainian online news portal, Facenews.ua, which was founded in June, has also integrated content from DW’s Russian and Ukrainian news departments into a DW content box on their website.

Africa
DW content is now being featured on Radio Tumaini and Tumaini Television as well as the group’s online portal. In addition, a Global 3000 content box is now featured on Radio WA’s homepage in Uganda. Radio WA has been broadcasting DW’s English radio program Africa Link since 2012.

Online
DW’s international news and current affairs content is available in four languages on the world’s largest free online television website FilmOn.com. Alki David, the eccentric and controversial billionaire owner of FilmOn.com said they were delighted to able include DW’s “authoritative and highly engaging” content on the pioneering web service which provides television content streamed online and on-demand. The partnership brings DW into the fast growing market of on-demand internet TV and into an exciting new area of distribution.  FilmOn has 45,000 hours of total video, all which are updated on a rolling basis.

In honor of Richard Wagner’s 200th birthday, DW is producing a documentary titled, The Colón Ring – Wagner in Buenos Aires. The program follows the legendary opera house Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires as its members stage a never before seen 7-hour  condensed version of Wagner’s powerful musical drama, “The Ring of the Nibelung”. The film premiered to an audience of 600 at the Delphi Filmpalast in Berlin on April 14 and drew warm applause and much praise. Global audiences can look forward to the television debut on DW scheduled for May 11 and 18, just before Wagner’s birthday on May 22. The two-part documentary will be broadcast in German, English, Spanish and Arabic. The DVD and Blu-ray box set, which include the performance itself, are also scheduled for release in May. Wagner fans wanting more can go online at www.dw.com and check out Wagner 200, a multimedia special devoted to celebrating the composer and his life’s work.