The Passionate Eye is a Canadian documentary television series that showcases documentary programming focusing on topics of news, current affairs, politics, and social issues. Airing on CBC Television and CBC News Network, the program airs a mixture of Canadian and international documentaries; some are original to the program, while others are feature documentaries that previously had a theatrical run, or television documentaries that previously or concurrently aired on other public television broadcasts in the United States or the United Kingdom.
Originally hosted by Douglas Leiterman, the program premiered in 1992 on CBC Newsworld as a showcase to rebroadcast classic documentary films, with noteworthy broadcasts in the inaugural season including Warrendale, Summer in Mississippi and The Mills of the Gods: Viet Nam. Leiterman would often also conduct new interviews with the filmmakers about their work on the films presented.
In its second season, it began to introduce newer documentaries into its programming, with its mix of older and newer films evolving much more strongly toward newer films as the show continued.
Michaëlle Jean became host of the program in 2000, holding the role until she was appointed the new Governor General of Canada in 2005. Jean was not immediately replaced by a permanent host; the series continued under a hostless format until 2015, when Wendy Mesley finally took the reins as a permanent host.
The series initially aired on Sunday and Monday nights. Debuting documentaries, the Sunday programme was titled The Passionate Eye Sunday Showcase (or, The Passionate Eye - Sunday); whereas the Monday-night feature was titled The Passionate Eye - Monday. The series eventually dropped the "Sunday" and "Monday" from its heading when it began to air episodes more regularly into its third decade.
The show has consistently aired on CBC News Network throughout its run; its broadcast on the main CBC Television network has varied, with the terrestrial network airing the show some seasons, or running other documentary series such as Doc Zone and Firsthand instead of The Passionate Eye at other times. Going into 2021, CBC made various changes to its documentary commissioning operations, dropping the other series and reuniting its documentary broadcasts on both the terrestrial and news channels under the Passionate Eye brand.
Similar documentary services of CBC's include: The Nature of Things, which commissions one-hour science and nature documentaries; documentary Channel, which commissions feature-length documentaries; and CBC Short Docs, which greenlights shorter-form documentaries and digital shorts.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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