c.2013 New York Times News Service

The independent short film “Outlawed in Pakistan” had its United States premiere in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where the Los Angeles Times called it “among the standouts.”

On Tuesday, PBS’ “Frontline” will broadcast the film, but not quite the same one, after the show’s producers, in an unusual move, asked the filmmakers to return to Pakistan to do additional reporting to answer a number of what they called “serious journalism” questions.

The film, in both versions, examines what happens when Pakistani girls and women pursue legal justice for rape charges. Over several years, it followed Kainat Soomro, who was 13 when she said she had been gang-raped by four men, and the efforts by those accused to clear their names.

Habiba Nosheen, 31, and Hilke Schellmann, 34, both based in New York, said in a telephone interview that, like many independent filmmakers, they used their life savings, family loans and a grant to get the film to the festival circuit. Money was so scarce they could not afford to translate all of their interview footage.

“Frontline” agreed to broadcast the film, but Raney Aronson-Rath, the series’ deputy executive producer, said “absolutely not,” when asked if she would have used the original version, which she called a “point of view film.” Instead, “Frontline” gave the filmmakers more money; Nosheen said the figure was “four times” the film’s budget, which she declined to disclose.

In February, the filmmakers returned to Pakistan, with a list of what Aronson-Rath said, by phone, were 30 or 40 questions from the “Frontline” producers about the legal investigation.

The filmmakers tracked down a new character, a cleric who seemed to back the accused men’s defense that Soomro had married one of them. Later, when the filmmakers translated all their footage, they found a startling quote, in which the man who said he was Soomro’s husband had threatened to kill her.

The extra money was “such an important thing for us; reporting is very expensive,” Nosheen said. “It was remarkable to us how much of an important and bigger story we could tell by the new information we gathered.”

The new version is “much more nuanced,” Schellmann added.

“When you do journalism, what emerges is a more powerful portrait for Kainat,” as well as giving the men’s side its due, Aronson-Rath said.

“It’s not that what they did was untrue,” she said of the filmmakers’ original version, “it just wasn’t the whole story.”

— ELIZABETH JENSEN

AD CAMPAIGN AT WNET USES REALITY TV AS A PUNCHLINE

After years of viewers complaining about reality television, a television station is chiming in.

WNET, the PBS station in New York, is to begin an advertising campaign on Monday composed of posters in about 185 subway stations and Twitter feeds. The goal of the campaign, with a budget estimated at $45,000, is to encourage people to join WNET as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Rather than making a typical point — that WNET’s shows like “Live From Lincoln Center,” “Masterpiece” and “Sesame Street” are far superior to reality fare — the posters take a cheeky tack by promoting five reality series that do not exist: “Bad Bad Bagboys,” “Bayou Eskimos,” “The Dillionaire,” “Knitting Wars” and “Married to a Mime.”

The make-believe shows are billed as being on make-believe channels like Insight and Arts, The Know Channel and Wonder Network — names that evoke the channels that lace their schedules with reality fare, among them A&E, once Arts & Entertainment; Discovery; and TLC, formerly The Learning Channel.

The payoff comes on the right side of the posters, which point to the fake advertisements and declare: “The fact you thought this was a real show says a lot about the state of TV. Support quality programming. Join us at thirteen.org.”

The intent is to present WNET as “an island in a sea of madness,” said Kellie Specter, senior director for communications and marketing at WNET.

The campaign was created by the New York office of CHI & Partners, part of WPP, which has been working for WNET since September on a pro bono basis.

WNET’s pledge drives “talk to people who are already watching,” said Victoria Davies, managing director of CHI & Partners New York. “We wanted to do something outside the channel, something people would enjoy, rather than something aggressive.”

The hope is that passers-by will “look twice” at the posters, she added, in the belief that “all these shows could be shows.”

The Twitter element of the campaign will involve posts from the fake stars of the fake shows: @RonPickles from “The Dillionaire”; @KnitterDaisy from “Knitting Wars”; and @StanTheMime and @MimeWife of “Married to a Mime.”

WNET has about 180,000 members, Specter said, and the anniversary goal is 50,000 new members. “CHI helped us come up with the goal and is helping us reach the goal,” she added. “We’ve over 31,000 new members since September.”

— STUART ELLIOTT