POV
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“Where Exactly Does Consent Live?” Rea Tajiri on Wisdom Gone Wild
Rea Tajiri’s Wisdom Gone Wild takes a hard look at a difficult subject. Tajiri’s 93-year-old mom Rose is a witness to the US’s dark concentration camp history, having been incarcerated along with the rest of her Nikkei farming family during the Second World War. Primarily through Rose’s engaging tales, alongside home video and family photos, Tajiri goes (and takes us) on a decade-plus, nonlinear cinematic journey— neatly paralleling Rose’s own thought process, as the veteran filmmaker’s mom began her dementia decline at the age of 76—or should I say, dementia “reinvention.” For far from being a tragic story about “losing” […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 20, 2023 -
“I Rejected the Concept of Linearity”: Leslie Tai on How to Have an American Baby
Sprawling in scope, observational in form and jaw-dropping in access, Leslie Tai’s How to Have an American Baby shows exactly what its title describes. The title is also the name of a sales talk one of the doc’s characters gives to Chinese moms with the financial means to travel and gift their future offspring US citizenship. The Chinese-American director takes her viewers on the wildest of rides through a birth tourism industry hiding in plain, sunny SoCal sight: underground maternity hotels run by shady operators and filled to the brim with expectant mothers, local hospitals employing doctors in on the […]
by Lauren Wissot on Nov 14, 2023 -
“We Worked With as Many BIPOC Womxn Crew Members as Possible, Whenever Possible!”: Linda Goldstein Knowlton on We Are The Radical Monarchs
The Black Panther Party, with its firm commitment to nourishing and nurturing the children of Oakland’s barely served African-American community, was founded all the way back in 1966. So it’s a bit shocking that it took nearly half a century later for the Radical Monarchs to be born. Or maybe not. After all, historically, queer women of color — like the Monarchs’ tireless co-founders Anayvette Martinez and Marilyn Hollinquest — had never been given leading roles in the Black Panther show. Fortunately, dedicated feminist and filmmaker Linda Goldstein Knowlton and her all-female team (including EP Grace Lee) are now shining […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jul 20, 2020 -
‘Nobody Wanted This Story’: Paula Eiselt And Heidi Reinberg On Making 93Queen At IFP Week 2018
Here’s a typical story about a documentary (or an indie, or occasionally even an experimental film): It cruises the festival circuit, likely at Sundance. It builds up buzz. Perhaps it collects some awards. It scores a distributor. Several months — or even a year, now and then even years — later it opens in theaters, riding on hazily recalled accolades and hopefully at least polite reviews. It is or isn’t a success, and there’s a chance it spends eternity lost in the vast bowels of iTunes. Some people (and a few reviewers) assume this is the tale of 93Queen, Paula […]
by Matt Prigge on Sep 19, 2018 -
Watch The Way It Should Be, Snapchat Doc about Queer Women of Color, Today Only
Appearing today only on this “Now This” section of Snapchat is The Way it Should Be, a short (naturally) doc about love and friendship between queer women of color by Chanelle Aponte Pearson and Terence Nance. The second entry in POV Snapchat Films, The Way It Should Be can be watched in less than five minutes, and it’s perfectly conceived for Snapchat’s vertical video format. Swiping left takes you to an image page with a chapter heading graphic. Swiping up takes you to a minute or so of video content that ranges from talking head interviews to short, music-video style […]
by Scott Macaulay on Oct 30, 2016 -
Fukushima Story
Just days after the March 2011 tsunami off the Japanese coast, Brooklyn-based photojournalist and documentarian Jake Price found his way to the Tōhoku region of northern Japan, the area hardest hit by the devastation. He stayed for months, living with Japan’s internal refugees and carefully chronicling their lives as they sought to come to terms with the disaster and rebuild. The result, Unknown Spring (2013), is an online interactive documentary that testifies to its subjects’ resilience and humanity in the face of unspeakable odds. But Price, who has had photography assignments across the globe, is no “parachute journalist.” Even before […]
by Randy Astle on Jul 25, 2016 -
POV’s 2016 Calls for Entries is Now Open
POV, television’s longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films, has opened the doors for entries for the 2017 PBS broadcast season and beyond. The deadline for submission is Wednesday, June 15, 2016. Each year POV premieres 14-16 of the most memorable nonfiction stories to public television audiences around the country. Since 1988, POV has presented over 400 films, including some of our all-time favorite documentaries such as Roger & Me (Michael Moore) Street Fight (Marshall Curry), American Revolutionary (Grace Lee) and The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer), among many others. For submission details and requirements, check out POV’s Call For Entries Guidelines and to get a […]
by Paula Bernstein on May 12, 2016 -
POV Launches Interactive Shorts Including Empire:Cradle
POV, America’s longest running television showcase for non-fiction films, is wading into interactive waters. Yesterday, the doc powerhouse launched an online, short-form transmedia section, with six projects, four of which were created by Hackathon alumni, and three of which will be premiering at NYFF’s Convergence sidebar in the ensuing weeks. The works are driven by timelines, geography, and photography, but my hands down favorite, Empire:Cradle, is fueled by a transcendent moral code. One in a series of four shorts that probes the ramifications of Dutch colonialism, Cradle is shot on location at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport. Pairing clusters of bystanders who watch the takeoffs and […]
by Sarah Salovaara on Sep 16, 2014 -
POV and The New York Times Launch New Documentary Film Initiative
Yesterday the PBS documentary series POV and The New York Times announced a collaborative effort to simultaneously show documentary films on the organizations’ individual websites. Later today the first film, Dan Barry and Kassie Bracken’s half-hour The Men of Atalissa, which was produced by the Times, kicks off the effort, with a full series of films following throughout the year. Along with the film, which is about a group of mentally disabled men who endured decades of abuse in the bunkhouse they lived in in Atalissa, Iowa, the Times will run an article about the men by Barry and the POV […]
by Randy Astle on Mar 8, 2014 -
POV Offers Funding Suggestions for Filmmakers
Here’s a list to bookmark: the POV for Filmmakers site has handy, spreadsheet-style lists of funding sources for documentary, new media and web films. From the Alter Cine Foundation to World View, the site offers links and one-paragraph summaries of the organization’s mission and funding range. Additional sections of the site provide links to engagement strategists — individuals and companies who can work on films’ outreach campaigns — as well as film festivals and the various entry points to PBS.
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 23, 2013
