P.O.V.

Season 17

POV, a cinema term for "point of view," is television's longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films. Since 1988, POV has presented more than 300 of the best, boldest, and most innovative documentaries to PBS audiences across the country.

Where to Watch Season 17

16 Episodes

  • Farmingville
    E1
    Farmingville"In the current frigid national climate facing economic migrants, Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini enter the traumatized world of Farmingville, a previously unassuming Long Island suburb that witnessed the beating and attempted murder of two Mexican day laborers. What the filmmakers find is the very dangerous, two-edged sword of a growing national crisis: on the one side, the community's increasing population of undocumented aliens, who are crowding into single-family dwellings and assembling on early morning street corners, hoping to grab a day's wage; on the other, Farmingville's home-owning families, many of whom have lived there for generations and are watching what they envision as a bucolic little village slipping away."
  • War Feels Like War
    E2
    War Feels Like WarWar Feels Like War is a 2004 British documentary film. It was broadcast in the United States as part of the P.O.V. series. For three months, Spanish filmmaker Esteban Manzanares Uyarra followed five reporters and photographers from Denmark, Norway, Poland, and the United States in Iraq. These journalists circumvented military media control to get access to a different perspective on the Iraq War. As the Coalition of the willing swept into Iraq, some journalists in Kuwait decided to travel in their wake, risking their lives to discover the impact of war on civilians. The journalists include best-selling author P.J. O'Rourke, who was working for ABC Radio, as well as reporters and photographers for news operations ranging from Poland's Radio Zet to Stephanie Sinclair, a photographer for the Chicago Tribune.
  • Thirst
    E3
    ThirstGlobal corporations who buy up local water supplies and sell for profit, including a look at tensions in Bolivia, India and Stockton, Calif.
  • Last Man Standing: Politics---Texas Style
    E4
    Last Man Standing: Politics---Texas StyleWhat is old is often new again. Most funerals today are part of a multimillion-dollar industry run by professionals. This increased reliance on mortuaries has alienated Americans from life's only inevitability — death. A Family Undertaking explores the growing home funeral movement by following several families in their most intimate moments as they reclaim the end of life, forgoing a typical mortuary funeral to care for their loved ones at home. Far from being a radical innovation, keeping funeral rites in the family or among friends is exactly how death was handled for most of pre-20th century America. Prior to the Civil War, caring for and preparing the dead for burial on family farms or in local cemeteries was both a domestic skill and a family responsibility.
  • A Family Undertaking
    E5
    A Family UndertakingThe movement to take the end of life process out of corporate funeral parlours and put it back into the family's hands.
  • Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love Story
    E6
    Speedo: A Demolition Derby Love StoryA profile of demolition-derby driver Ed "Speedo" Jager.
  • Every Mother's Son
    E7
    Every Mother's SonThree New York mothers unite to seek justice for police brutality.
  • Freedom Machines
    E8
    Freedom MachinesFreedom Machines is a 2004 PBS/P.O.V. documentary that looks at disability in the age of technology, presenting intimate stories of people ages 8-93, whose talents and independence are being unleashed by access to modern, enabling technologies. Nearly twenty years after the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the film reflects on the gaps between its promise and the realities for our largest minority group – 54,000,000 Americans with disabilities. Whether mainstream tools or inventions such as a stair climbing wheelchair, Freedom Machines examines the power of technology to change lives.
  • A Panther in Africa
    E9
    A Panther in AfricaPete O'Neal, a former leader of the Black Panthers, lives in exile in Tanzania.
  • Chisholm '72
    E10
    Chisholm '72Shirley Chisholm's 1972 presidential bid.
  • The Education of Shelby Knox
    E11
    The Education of Shelby KnoxTeenager Shelby Knox advocates sex education in the high schools of her hometown, Lubbock, Texas.
  • Big Enough
    E12
    Big EnoughPhysical and emotional challenges faced by the dwarfs profiled in the 1982 film "Little People."
  • Lost Boys of Sudan
    E13
    Lost Boys of SudanLost Boys of Sudan is a feature-length documentary that follows two Sudanese refugees on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America.
  • Wattstax
    E14
    WattstaxWattstax is a 1973 documentary film by Mel Stuart that focused on the 1972 Wattstax music festival and the African American community of Watts in Los Angeles, California. The film was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Documentary Film in 1974. It was also screened at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, but was not entered into the main competition.
  • Episode 15
    E15
    Episode 15
  • Episode 16
    E16
    Episode 16

Cast of Season 17

  • Cara MertesProducer
  • Simon KilmurryProducer
  • Sally Jo FiferProducer

 

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