What are the chances that a former prostitute could be elected a Member of the Parliament of New Zealand by a conservative, rural district? What if that person were also a transsexual? The odds may seem daunting, but Georgina Beyer did it.

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We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

90 Miles is a 2001 documentary film written and directed by Juan Carlos Zaldívar. The film is a recounting of the events that lead Zaldívar to become a Marielito and leave Cuba for a better life in Miami. It premiered in 2003 on PBS as part of its P.O.V. series. It won two awards: the Grand Coral, First Prize, for Documentary and the Memoria Documentary Award. 90 Miles recounts the strange twist of fate that took Juan Carlos Zaldívar across one of the world's most treacherous stretches of water. It is a journey of a family in search for healing and understanding. Probing and thoughtful, Zaldívar uncovers the emotional distance opened in thousands of families by the 90 miles between the U.S. and Cuba.

Few American icons are as well known for their popular kitsch as the hula dance. From old Hollywood movies to entertainment for tourists, the hip-swaying girls in grass skirts and colorful lei have long masked an ancient cultural tradition. Now, after years of being shadowed by stereotypes, the hula is experiencing a rebirth that celebrates Hawaiian culture.

West 47th Street is a documentary film produced by Bill Lichtenstein and June Peoples of the Peabody Award-winning Lichtenstein Creative Media.

"West 47th Street" is an intimate cinéma vérité portrait of four people with serious mental illness as their lives naturally unfold over a three-year period beginning in spring 2001. The characters are all members of Fountain House, a psychiatric rehabilitation programme located on West 47th Street in a part of New York City once known as Hell's Kitchen.

At times hilarious and at other times tragic, West 47th Street provided an unprecedented window on the lives of people who are often feared and ignored, seldom understood. The film features Fitzroy Fredericks; Zeinab Wali; Nathanial "Tex" Gordon; and Frances Olivero. The film highlights the faith and courage with which these four people fight to regain control of their lives. Viewers see them on and off the streets, in and out of the hospital, on and off medication, at home and at work.

The film was the “Editors’ Choice – Pick of the Night," by TV Guide. The Cleveland Film Festival hailed the film as: “The most wrenching moments in the Cleveland International Film Festival belonged not to any scripted plot, but to a special preview of this vérité documentary masterpiece." Dennis King at Tulsa World wrote, "A life-altering cinema experience. Watch it and you'll no longer be able to pass those troubled souls on the street without noticing, without caring, without understanding that attention must be paid.

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We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

State of Denial is a 2003 documentary film about AIDS in Africa, produced and directed by Elaine Epstein. The film highlights the errors of President Mbeki's government, which insists that there isn't enough evidence to show that HIV causes AIDS and refuses vital life-saving drugs to their people because of unknown long-term risks. The film follows the stories of HIV positive Africans and activists as well as their careers, interspersed with the harrowing statistics of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It features various HIV positive patients coping with the disease in times when the use of ARV medicine was strongly discouraged by the South African government.

The movie captures the desperation and growing discontent of average South Africans infected and affected by the disease. Some of the subjects interviewed make heartbreaking but inspirational statements about AIDS and how living with it is like. After the death of his brother who also succumbed to the disease, a young man is filmed saying the following:

For me, it was the most traumatic time in my life because I could see myself in him. You know, he didn’t really have to die as helplessly as he did. And not only him, but thousands and thousands of people are dying unnecessarily. It makes me sick.

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Flag Wars is a poignant account of the politics and pain of gentrification. Working-class black residents in Columbus, Ohio fight to hold on to their homes. Realtors and gay home-buyers see fixer-uppers. The clashes expose prejudice and self-interest on both sides, as well as the common dream to have a home to call your own.

"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.

Amid a conflict pitting the providence of dreams against the privileges (and rights) of property, Sandoval and Tambini resist the urge to make agitprop, almost agonizingly presenting both sides of the conflict while, at the same time, chronicling how a small town in upheaval can get co-opted into a national nightmare. Anti-immigration groups, racist hatemongers and even local figures with specialized agendas rise and fall throughout the telling of the Farmingville tale. More than a story about suburbs, property values, immigration, and racism, Farmingville is ultimately about the conflicted concept of what being American means."

Quoting Diane Weyermann from the 2004 Sundance Film Festival site.

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War 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.

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What 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. The trauma of the Civil War created the need for a new profession: that of undertaker. The advent of the undertaker marked a sharp and negative shift in American attitudes toward death. For many, the death of a loved one became an alienating event, sanitized and institutionalized. Americans literally lost touch with death. Death also became more expensive. Today an average funeral-home memorial and interment costs as much as $7,000 – a burdensome expense many families feel pressured to meet in the name of honoring their dead.

A Family Undertaking makes clear that the heart of the home funeral movement is the desire to rescue funerals from the impersonality of a mass-market industry, and to reshape them according to personal beliefs or family and community traditions. The film introduces us to individuals like the Carr family of South Dakota, preparing for the death of 90-year-old family patriarch Bernard, and Anne Stuart and Dwight Caswell of California, preparing for the end of Anne's struggle with terminal cancer. Through their stories we see that "hands-on" care for the dead by family members, including children, can aid in grieving, bring a sense of fulfillment, and help loved ones to grasp the reality of a death. Their home funerals are remarkable documents of death made intimate, meaningful, and even joyful.

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We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

Wattstax 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.

Freedom 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.

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We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

Chisholm `72: Unbought Unbossed is a PBS P.O.V. documentary about Shirley Chisholm.

The Education of Shelby Knox is 2005 documentary film that tells the coming-of-age story of public speaker and feminist Shelby Knox, a teenager who joins a campaign for comprehensive sex education in the high schools of Lubbock, Texas. TEOSK was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 and aired on PBS’ P.O.V. series that same year. It was directed and produced by Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt.

A follow-up to the 1982 Emmy-nominated film Little People, Big Enough is a 2004 documentary film about Anu Trombino, Karla and John Lizzo, Len and Lenette Sawisch, and Sharon and Ron Roskamp, who are all typical Americans in every respect, except that they are dwarfs. Twenty years after her first film, Jan Krawitz finds out what has happened to her subjects.

Big Enough was met with high critical acclaim, receiving an Independent Filmmaker Award from the Carolina Film & Video Festival and was aired as part of PBS's Point of View series in 2005.

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We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

In the Realms of the Unreal is a 2004 documentary about outsider artist Henry Darger.

An obscure janitor during his life, Darger is known for the posthumous discovery of his elaborate 15,143-page fantasy manuscript entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred watercolor paintings and other drawings illustrating the story.

Hardwood is a 2005 short documentary film about Canadian director Hubert Davis' relationship to his father, former Harlem Globetrotters member Mel Davis. Through interviews with his mother, his father's wife, his half-brother, and Mel Davis himself, Hubert Davis explores why Mel made the decisions that he did, and how that has affected his life.

Hardwood was met with high critical acclaim and received an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject nomination. It also aired on PBS as part of its Point of View series in 2005.

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We don't have an overview translated in English. Help us expand our database by adding one.

Bright Leaves is a 2003 documentary film by independent filmmaker Ross McElwee about the association his family had with the tobacco industry.

Bright Leaf is the name of a strain of tobacco. It was also the name of a 1949 novel and 1950 feature film about a struggle between two tobacco barons.

The struggle depicted in the film, according to McElwee family tradition, parallels the historical one between McElwee's great-grandfather and the patriarch of the Duke family who founded Duke University.

The documentary follows McElwee's usual style, where he gives voiceovers to apparently spontaneous footage, making the story more personal.

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Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust is 2004 documentary film about Menachem Daum, an Orthodox Jew and son of German Nazi Holocaust survivors who has spent his life interviewing survivors about the impact of the Holocaust on their lives. After hearing a disturbing tape of a rabbi openly preaching "hatred" of non-Jews, Daum attempts to raise an outcry in his Brooklyn Orthodox community. When ignored by the media and community leaders, Daum decides to fly to Israel to discuss the matter with his two sons, concerned with the "ethical legacy" he is responsible for leaving them.

Hiding and Seeking was produced, written, and directed by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky and aired on PBS's Point of View series in 2005. It has been met with high critical praise, receiving a 90% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Hobart Shakespeareans of Hobart Boulevard Elementary School is a 2005 documentary film that tells the story of the inspirational inner-city Los Angeles school teacher Rafe Esquith whose rigorous fifth-grade curriculum includes English, mathematics, geography, and literature. The pinnacle of student achievement each year is the performance of a play by William Shakespeare; in the year of filming, that play was Hamlet.

The Hobart Shakespeareans drew the attention of renowned Shakespearean actors Ian McKellen and Michael York, who pay a visit to the class to watch their performance of Hamlet. Delighted with the students, York calls the Hobart Shakespeareans "one of the great Shakespeare troupes" in Los Angeles.

Rafe and the Hobart Shakespeareans work hard every year to achieve a beautiful Shakespeare play. The recent plays they have performed were As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice.

The Hobart Shakespeareans aired on PBS' P.O.V. series in 2005. It was produced and directed by Mel Stuart.

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A story of love, revolution and betrayal, No More Tears Sister explores the price of truth in times of war. Set during the violent ethnic conflict that has enveloped Sri Lanka over decades, the film recreates the courageous and vibrant life of renowned human rights activist Dr. Rajani Thiranagama. Mother, anatomy professor, author and symbol of hope, Thiranagama's commitment to truth and human rights led to her assassination at the age of 35. This documentary recounts her dramatic story through rare archival footage, intimate correspondences, and poetic recreations, exposing the high price that this revolutionary woman paid for her pursuit of justice.

In Japan, baseball is not a pastime — it's a national obsession. And for many of the country's youth, the sport has become a rite of passage, epitomized by the national high school baseball tournament known simply as "Koshien." Four thousand teams enter, but only 49 are chosen to compete in the championship that grips the nation for two weeks every August.

Why do the comic-strip Adventures of Tintin, about an intrepid boy reporter, continue to fascinate us decades after their publication? "Tintin and I" highlights the potent social and political underpinnings that give Tintin's world such depth, and delve into the mind of Hergé, Tintin's work-obsessed Belgian creator, to reveal the creation and development of Tintin over time. Rare and surprisingly candid 1970s interviews reveal the profound insecurities and anxieties that drove Hergé to produce stories that have not only entertained millions of children but also helped to satisfy a personal longing for self-expression. With stunning visual effects, "Tintin and I" takes us on a fascinating journey into the psyche and brilliant work of Hergé, in his own words.

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In 1990, an unknown candidate named Alberto Fujimori rode a wave of popular support to become the president of Peru. He fought an allout war on terror against the guerilla organization Shining Path, and won. Ten years later, accused of kidnapping, murder and corruption, he fled Peru to his native Japan, where he was in exile for four years. Fujimori has remained virtually silent about the abrupt end of his controversial presidency, until now. He granted an unprecedented, in-depth interview to filmmaker Ellen Perry, who presents an intimate, chilling portrait of this enigmatic leader's rise and fall, interweaving neverbefore-seen footage from his regime with Fujimori's own words. As events unfold in his quest to return to Peruvian politics, The Fall of Fujimori offers a cautionary tale about power and corruption in an age of terrorism.

Global Recordings Network (GRN), founded in Los Angeles in 1939, has produced audio versions of Bible stories in over 5,500 languages, and aims to record in every language on earth. They distribute the recordings, along with ultra-low-tech hand-wind players, in isolated regions and among displaced migrant workers. The Bible stories played by the missionaries are sometimes the first encounter community members have had with recorded sound, and, even more frequently, the first time they have heard their own language recorded. GRN calls their target audience "the tailenders" because they are the last to be reached by worldwide evangelism. Filmed in the Solomon Islands, Mexico, India and the United States, The Tailenders focuses on the intersection of missionary activity and global capitalism and raises questions about how meaning, carried by the simple sound of a human voice, changes as it crosses language and culture.

The proud Mexican tradition of corrido music—captured in the performances of Mexican band Los Tigres del Norte and the late Chalino Sanchez—provides both heartbeat and backbone to this rich examination of songs, drugs and dreams along the U.S./Mexico border. Al Otro Lado follows Magdiel, an aspiring corrido composer from the drug capital of Mexico, as he faces two difficult choices to better his life: to traffic drugs or to cross the border illegally into the United States. An Official Selection of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Alan Lomax was "the song hunter." He devoted his life to recording the world's folk tunes before they would permanently disappear with the rise of the modern music industry. In Lomax the Songhunter, filmmaker Rogier Kappers seeks to tell Lomax's story by interviewing friends such as Pete Seeger, combining it with archival recordings of music greats Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, and gathering footage of the cotton fields, rock quarries and prisons where Alan Lomax captured America’s quintessential music. Finally, Kappers followed the route that Lomax took so many years ago and traveled to remote villages in Spain and Italy, hearing memories and music from the farmers, shepherds and weavers whose songs Lomax recorded decades earlier.

The term "working poor" should be an oxymoron. If you work full time, you should not be poor, but more than 30 million Americans — one in four workers — are stuck in jobs that do not pay the basics for a decent life. Waging a Living chronicles the day-to-day battles of four low-wage earners fighting to lift their families out of poverty. Shot over a three-year period in the northeast and California, this observational documentary captures the dreams, frustrations, and accomplishments of a diverse group of people who struggle to live from paycheck to paycheck. By presenting an unvarnished look at the barriers that these workers must overcome to lift their families out of poverty, Waging a Living offers a sobering view of the elusive American Dream.

Devon, Montrey, Richard, and Romesh are just at that age — 12 and 13 years old — when boys start to become men. But in their hometown of Baltimore, one of the country’s most poverty-stricken cities for inner-city residents, African-American boys have a very high chance of being incarcerated or killed before they reach adulthood. The boys are offered an amazing opportunity in the form of the Baraka school, a project founded to break the cycle of violence through an innovative education program that literally removed young boys from low-performing public schools and unstable home environments. They travel with their classmates to rural Kenya in East Africa, where a teacher-student ratio of one to five, a strict disciplinary program and a comprehensive curriculum form the core of their new educational program. The Boys of Baraka follows along with their journey, and examines each boy’s transformation during this remarkable time. Winner of awards at the Newport, Chicago, Woodstock and SILVERDOCS Film Festivals. A co-presentation with the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Produced in association with P.O.V./American Documentary.

In the wake of his stepfather’s death, Thomas Allen Harris embarks on a journey of reconciliation with the man who raised him as a son but whom he could never call "father." As part of the first wave of black South African exiles, Harris’s stepfather, B. Pule Leinaeng, and his eleven comrades left their home in Bloemfontein in 1960. They told the world about the brutality of the apartheid system and raised support for the fledgling African National Congress and its leader, Nelson Mandela. Drawing upon the memories of the surviving disciples and their families, along with the talent of young South African actors who portray their harrowing experiences, Twelve Disciples of Nelson Mandela tells an intimate story of family and home against the backdrop of a global movement for freedom. A co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS), in association with P.O.V./American Documentary and the National Black Programming Consortium.

"My name is Steven, and I am a dwarf..." So begins No Bigger than a Minute, a stylishly eclectic documentary film that introduces viewers to four-foot-tall filmmaker, Steven Delano. For forty years Steven lived his life as a reluctant celebrity, disavowing his dwarf deviance and avoiding both the benefits and potential traumas of real self-discovery. In making this film Steven uses his license-of-stature and a healthy dose of irreverent humor to show first-hand how a genetic mutation marks a person for life. Brimming with bright colors, bold images, surreal reenactments, and an original score composed from Steven's very own mutated DNA sequence, No Bigger than a Minute finds the dignity of dwarfs in an exposé of the delightful, fulfilling and sometimes shocking realities that define a tip-toe life.

Just over the border in Mexico is an area peppered with maquiladoras: massive factories often owned by the world's largest multinational corporations. Carmen and Lourdes work at maquiladoras in Tijuana, where each day they confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos. In this lyrical documentary, the women reach beyond the daily struggle for survival to organize for change, taking on both the Mexican and U.S. governments and a major television manufacturer. A co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS).

My Country, My Country is a 2006 documentary film about Iraq under U.S. occupation by the filmmaker Laura Poitras.

How do you measure the distance from an African village to an American city? What does it mean to be a refugee in today's "global village?" Rain in a Dry Land provides eye-opening answers as it chronicles the fortunes of two Somali Bantu families, transported by relief agencies from years of civil war and refugee life to Springfield, Massachusetts and Atlanta, Georgia. As the newcomers confront racism, poverty and 21st-century culture shock, the film captures their efforts to survive in America and create a safe haven for their war-torn families. Their poetry, humor, and amazing resilience show us our own world through new eyes. A co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS). (packaged to 86:46)

If the refugee is today’s tragic icon of a war-torn world, then Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, a reggae-inflected band born in the camps of West Africa, represents a real-life story of survival and hope. The six-member Refugee All Stars came together in Guinea after civil war forced them from their native Sierra Leone. Traumatized by physical injuries and the brutal loss of family and community, they fight back with the only means they have – music. The result, as shown in Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars, is a tableau of tragedy transformed by the band’s inspiring determination to sing and be heard. A Diverse Voices Project co-production. (packaged to 86:46)

What does a family have to endure to create a future for itself? In April 2000, Alex White Plume and his Lakota family planted industrial hemp on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota after other crops had failed. They put their hopes for a sustainable economy in hemp’s hardiness and a booming worldwide demand for its many products, from clothing to food. Although growing hemp, a relative of marijuana, was banned in the U.S., Alex believed that tribal sovereignty, along with hemp’s non-psychoactive properties, would protect him. But when federal agents raided the White Plumes’ fields, the Lakota Nation was swept into a Byzantine struggle over tribal sovereignty, economic rights and common sense. A co-presentation with Native American Public Telecommunications. (packaged to 56:46)

Revolution ’67 is an illuminating account of events too often relegated to footnotes in U.S. history – the black urban rebellions of the 1960s. Focusing on the six-day Newark, N.J., outbreak in mid-July, Revolution ’67 reveals how the disturbances began as spontaneous revolts against poverty and police brutality and ended as fateful milestones in America’s struggles over race and economic justice. Voices from across the spectrum – activists Tom Hayden and Amiri Baraka, journalist Bob Herbert, Mayor Sharpe James, and other officials, National Guardsmen, and Newark citizens – recall lessons as hard-earned then as they have been easy to neglect since. A co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS ) and American Documentary | P.O.V. in association with WSKG. (packaged to 86:46)

A decade ago, after an epiphany at a New York restaurant, Richard Ogust began dedicating his time and resources to rescuing endangered turtles – confiscating hundreds bound for Southeast Asian food markets. When the filmmakers catch up with the 50-year-old writer, he is sharing his Manhattan loft with 1,200 turtles, including five species extinct in the wild. But his growing “ark” and preservation efforts are threatening to exhaust him, both mentally and financially. With luminous images and a haunting musical score, The Chances of the World Changing documents two years in the life of a man who finds himself struggling to save hundreds of lives, including his own. (packaged to 86:46)

In the 1990s, at the height of the prison-building boom, a prison opened in rural America every 15 days. Prison Town, USA tells the story of Susanville, California, one small town that tries to resuscitate its economy by building a prison – with unanticipated consequences. Weaving the stories of a laidoff mill worker turned guard, a struggling dairy owner and an inmate’s family stranded in Susanville, the film sheds light on an industry that is transforming the social and economic landscape of rural America. A co-production of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and KQED/Truly California.

(packaged to 86:46)

Thirty years after making a celebrated student short about a four-year-old child of free spirits living in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district at the height of the 1960s, Ralph Arlyck attempts the kind of revelation only documentary film can provide. In Following Sean, he goes in search of the impish, barefoot kid who delighted or horrified audiences, reflecting the hopes and fears of a turbulent, utopian era. In discovering what has become of Sean, Arlyck finds a complex reality—and experiences pure cinematic surprise. As the filmmaker comes to grips with his own midlife conflicts, Following Sean may reveal as much about Arlyck and his generation as it does his subject. A co-presentation with KQED/Truly California. (packaged to 86:46)

In Arctic Son, the clash of tradition and modernity puts a Native father and son at odds in the village of Old Crow, 80 miles above the Arctic Circle. Stanley, Jr., raised in Seattle, is drifting deeper into drinking and partying. Stanley, Sr., a remote, philosophical figure to his son, keeps the ways of his Gwitchin ancestors alive by hunting, fishing and living by his wits in the harsh arctic environment. After a lifetime apart, the two are reunited in the raw, quiet beauty of the Canadian Yukon in a story that captures the dialogue between a father and son from vastly different worlds. (packaged to 86:46)

Nestled below the rugged peaks of the Northern Rockies in Montana—as iconic a representation of America’s “purple mountain majesties” as one can find—lies the worst case of community-wide exposure to a toxic substance in U.S. history. In the small town of Libby, many hundreds of people are sick or have already died from asbestos exposure. Libby, Montana takes a long working day’s journey into a blue-collar community, and finds a different reality—one where the American Dream exacts a terrible price. (packaged to 86:46)

Los Angeles is now the country’s center for apparel manufacturing, but many of its factories bear an eerie resemblance to New York’s early 20th century sweatshops. Made in L.A. follows the remarkable journey of three Latina immigrants working in L.A.’s garment factories and their struggle for self-empowerment as they wage a three-year battle to bring a major clothing retailer to the negotiating table. This intimate film offers a rare and poignant glimpse into this “other” California, where immigrants in many industries toil long hours for sub-minimum wages, fighting for an opportunity in a new country. A co-production with the Independent Television Service (ITVS). A Diverse Voices Project co-production. A co-presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting. (packaged to 86:46)

How far would you go to stop a war? The Camden 28 recalls a 1971 raid on a Camden, N.J., draft board office by “Catholic Left” activists protesting the Vietnam War and its effects on urban America. Arrested on site in a clearly planned sting, the protesters included four Catholic priests, a Lutheran minister, and 23 others. The Camden 28 reveals the story behind the arrests – a provocative tale of government intrigue and personal betrayal – and the ensuing legal battle, which Supreme Court Justice William Brennan called "one of the great trials of the 20th century." Thirty-five years later, the participants take stock of the motives, fears and costs of their activism – and its relevance to America today. (packaged to 86:46)

The agonies of present-day Africa are deeply etched in the bodies of women. In eastern Congo on the Rwanda border, vying militias, armies and bandits use rape as a weapon of terror. Lumo Sinai was just over 20 when marauding soldiers attacked her. A fistula, common among victims of violent rape, rendered her incontinent and threatens her ability to bear children. Rejected by her fiancé and cast aside by her family, Lumo awaits reconstructive surgery. Lumo is her story, tragic for its cruelties but also inspiring for the struggle she wages and the dignity she displays, with the help of an extraordinary African hospital, to overcome shame, fear, and the affliction that robs her of a normal life. (packaged to 56:46)

In one of documentary cinema’s more remarkable enterprises, 49 Up makes its U.S. broadcast premiere as the seventh in a series of films that has profiled a group of English children every seven years, beginning in 1964. Renowned director Michael Apted (Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorky Park, Gorillas in the Mist) has doggedly pursued the series as the children have grown into adults, navigating the divide between childhood dreams and adult realities. 49 Up revisits questions of love, marriage, career, class and prejudice – discovering unexpected turns in individual lives, and surprising views of the Up film series itself. (packaged to 146:46)

Tony Kushner, whose epochal Angels in America won a Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award, has emerged as one of the country’s leading playwrights – and one of its fiercest moral critics. In the film Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner, Oscar-winning director Freida Lee Mock (P.O.V.’s Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision) followed Kushner for three tumultuous years, from Sept. 11, 2001 to the 2004 presidential election, to delve into the passions that keep him reaching for the great American play. Actors Marcia Gay Harden, Meryl Streep, Tonya Pinkins and Emma Thompson, directors Mike Nichols and George C. Wolf, and writer/artist Maurice Sendak are seen collaborating with Kushner on such landmark works as Angels in America; Caroline, or Change; and Homebody/Kabul. (packaged to 116:46)

The 21st-season opener features "Traces of the Trade: A Story From the Deep North," an exploration of filmmaker Katrina Brown's slave-trading ancestors, the Rhode Island DeWolfs. She and nine relatives (including Tom DeWolf, author of "Inheriting the Trade") retrace the old slave-trading route, including stops in Bristol, R.I., Ghana and Cuba.

Forget the pie charts, color-coded maps and hyperventilating pundits. What's the street-level experience of voters in today's America? In a triumph of documentary storytelling, Election Day combines 11 stories — shot simultaneously on November 2, 2004, from dawn until long past midnight — into one. Factory workers, ex-felons, harried moms, Native American activists and diligent poll watchers, from South Dakota to Florida, take the process of democracy into their own hands. The result: an entertaining, inspiring and sometimes unsettling tapestry of citizens determined on one fateful day to make their votes count.

In 1997, U.S. Marines patrolling the Texas-Mexico border as part of the War on Drugs shot and killed Esequiel Hernández Jr. Mistaken for a drug runner, the 18-year-old was, in fact, a U.S. citizen tending his family's goats with a .22 rifle. He became the first American killed by U.S. military forces on native soil since the 1970 Kent State shootings. The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández, narrated by Tommy Lee Jones, explores Hernandez's tragic death and its torturous aftermath. His parents and friends, the Marines on patrol, and investigators discuss the dangers of militarizing the border and the death of one young man.

Renowned sculptor John Houser has a dream: to build the world's tallest bronze equestrian statue for the city of El Paso, Texas. He envisions a stunning monument to Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate that will honor the contributions Hispanic people made to building the American West. But as the project nears completion, troubles arise. Native Americans are outraged — they remember Oñate as the man who brought genocide to their land and sold their children into slavery. As El Paso divides along lines of race and class in The Last Conquistador, the artist must face the moral implications of his work.

A group of young Palestinian men work illegally as construction laborers in the Israeli city of Modi'in. Caught between Israeli security laws and a Palestinian Authority they see as having failed them, they work for Israeli contractors by day while hiding from police by night. Like youths everywhere, they pass their idle hours talking about love, marriage and future hopes. Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar has crafted a powerful vérité film that illuminates the plight of young men questioning their own culture while struggling to survive in the midst of bitter conflict.

This is democracy — Japanese style. Campaign provides a startling insider's view of Japanese electoral politics in this portrait of a man plucked from obscurity by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to run for a critical seat on a suburban city council. Kazuhiko "Yama-san" Yamauchi's LDP handlers are unconcerned that he has zero political experience, no charisma, no supporters and no time to prepare. What he does have is the institutional power of Japan's modern version of Tammany Hall pushing him forward. Yama-san allows his life to be turned upside down as he pursues the rituals of Japanese electioneering — with both tragic and comic results. A co-presentation with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM).

In this classic 1969 documentary, the Man in Black is captured at his peak, the first of many in a looming roller-coaster career. Fresh on the heels of his Folsom Prison album, Cash reveals the dark intensity and raw talent that made him a country music star and cultural icon. Director Robert Elfstrom got closer than any other filmmaker to Cash, who is seen performing with his new bride June Carter Cash, in a rare duet with Bob Dylan, and behind the scenes with friends, family and aspiring young musicians. Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music paints an unforgettable portrait that endures beyond the singer's 2003 death.

Belarus has been called "Europe's last dictatorship." Since 1994, Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the ex-Soviet republic with a despotic hand, jailing the opposition, shutting down the press and refusing to investigate the assassinations of dissidents. He has virtually silenced his critics — but not one lone performance artist who stages public stunts mocking the dictator's pretensions. Belarusian Waltz is the story of Alexander Pushkin, whose audacious, comical exploits find him facing the hostility of the police and the consternation of his family. An offbeat tale of post-modern street theater meeting 1930s-style authoritarianism, the film offers a surprising window into the soul of the Belarusian people.

When in 1998 Chilean judge Juan Guzmán was assigned the first criminal cases against the country's ex-dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, no one expected much. Guzmán had supported Pinochet's 1973 coup — waged as an anti-Communist crusade — that left the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and thousands of others dead or "disappeared." The filmmakers trace the judge's descent into what he calls "the abyss," where he uncovers the past — including his own role in the tragedy. The Judge and the General reveals one of the 20th century’s most notorious episodes and tells a cautionary tale about violating human rights in the name of "higher ideals." A co-production of Independent Television Service (ITVS) in association with Latino Public Broadcasting.

When brothers Armando and Carlos Peña set off to carry their mother's ashes to south Texas, their road trip turns into a quest for answers about a strangely veiled past. As they reunite with five other brothers, the two men try to piece together their family's shattered history. Why was their mother cast out by her family? What happened to their father, who disappeared during the notorious 1954 U.S. deportation program Operation Wetback? Calavera Highway is a sweeping story of seven Mexican-American men grappling with the meaning of masculinity, fatherhood and a legacy of rootless beginnings. Produced in association with American Documentary | P.O.V. A co-presentation of Latino Public Broadcasting. Funded in part by Center for Asian American Media with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

What happens if you fall sick and are one of 47 million people in America without health insurance? Critical Condition by Roger Weisberg (Waging a Living, POV 2006) puts a human face on the nation's growing health care crisis by capturing the harrowing struggles of four critically ill Americans who discover that being uninsured can cost them their jobs, health, home, savings, even their lives. Filmed in vérité style, Critical Condition offers a moving and invaluable expose at a time when the nation is debating how to extend health insurance to all Americans. A production of Public Policy Productions in association with Thirteen/WNET New York and American Documentary | POV

How much would you sacrifice to survive? When Chicago filmmaker Joanna Rudnick tested positive for the "breast cancer gene" at age 27, she knew the information could save her life. And she knew she was not only confronting mortality at an early age, but also was going to have to make heart-wrenching decisions about the life that lay ahead of her. Should she take the irreversible preventive step of having her breasts and ovaries removed or risk developing cancer? What would happen to her romantic life, her hopes for a family? In the Family documents Rudnick's efforts to reach out to other women while facing her deepest fears. A co-production of Joanna Rudnick, Kartemquin Films and Independent Television Service (ITVS).

Nearing completion, China's massive Three Gorges Dam is altering the landscape and the lives of people living along the fabled Yangtze River. Countless ancient villages and historic locales will be submerged, and 2 million people will lose their homes and livelihoods. The Yu family desperately seeks a reprieve by sending their 16-year-old daughter to work in the cruise ship industry that has sprung up to give tourists a last glimpse of the legendary river valley. With cinematic sweep, Up the Yangtze explores lives transformed by the biggest hydroelectric dam in history, a hotly contested symbol of the Chinese economic miracle. An official selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. An EyeSteelFilm/National Film Board of Canada production in association with American Documentary | P.O.V. A co-presentation with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM).

When is it right to kill? In the midst of war, is it right to refuse? Eight U.S. soldiers today, some who killed and some who said no, reveal their inner moral dilemmas in Soldiers of Conscience. Made with official permission of the U.S. Army, the film transcends politics to explore the tension between spiritual values and military orders. Soldiers follows the stories of both conscientious objectors and those who criticize them. Through this clash of views, the film discovers a surprising common ground: all soldiers are "soldiers of conscience," torn between the demands of duty and the call of conscience.

Imagine watching Schindler's List and knowing the sadistic Nazi camp commandant played by Ralph Fiennes was your father. Inheritance is the story of Monika Hertwig, the daughter of mass murderer Amon Goeth. Hertwig has spent her life in the shadow of her father's sins, trying to come to terms with her "inheritance." She seeks out Helen Jonas, who was enslaved by Goeth and who is one of the few living eyewitnesses to his unspeakable brutality. The women's raw, emotional meeting unearths terrible truths and lingering questions about how the actions of our parents can continue to ripple through generations.

Puerto Rican-American rapper Hamza Pérez pulled himself out of drug dealing and street life 12 years ago and became a Muslim. Now he's moved to Pittsburgh's tough North Side to start a new religious community, rebuild his shattered family and take his message of faith to other young people through hard-hitting hip-hop music. But when the FBI raids his mosque, Hamza must confront the realities of the post-9/11 world, and himself. New Muslim Cool takes viewers on Hamza's ride through streets, slums and jail cells — following his spiritual journey to some surprising places in an America that never stops changing.

In September 2002, three skinheads were roaming a park in Rheims, France, looking to "do an Arab," when they settled for a gay man instead. Twenty-nine-year-old François Chenu fought back fiercely, but he was beaten unconscious and thrown into a river, where he drowned. The acclaimed French vérité film Beyond Hatred is the story of the crime's aftermath; above all, of the Chenu family's brave and heartrending struggle to seek justice while trying to make sense of such pointless violence and unbearable loss. With remarkable dignity, they fight to transcend hatred and the inevitable desire for revenge.

In 2004, Jason Crigler's life was taking off. He was one of New York's hottest young guitarists, his new CD was due for release and his wife, Monica, was pregnant with their first child. Then, at a gig in Manhattan, Jason suffered a near-fatal brain hemorrhage. His doctors doubted he would ever emerge from his near-vegetative state. The astonishing journey that followed, documented by friend and filmmaker Eric Daniel Metzgar (The Chances of the World Changing, POV 2007), is a stirring family saga and a portrait of creative struggle in the face of overwhelming tragedy.

The International Criminal Court is the first permanent court to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

Filmed over 23 years, The Betrayal is the Academy Award-nominated directorial debut of renowned cinematographer Ellen Kuras in a unique collaboration with the film's subject and co-director, Thavisouk ("Thavi") Phrasavath. After the U.S. government waged a secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War, Thavi's father and thousands of other Laotians who had fought alongside American forces were abandoned and left to face imprisonment or execution. Hoping to find safety, Thavi's family made a harrowing escape to America, where they discovered a different kind of war. Weaving ancient prophecy with personal testimony and stunning imagery, The Betrayal is a story of survival and the resilient bonds of family.

One of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers takes a vérité look at Oxford's Mulberry Bush School for emotionally disturbed children. Mulberry's heroically forbearing staff greets extreme, sometimes violent behavior with only consolation and gentle restraint. Kim Longinotto's unblinking camera captures an arduous process and a nearly unhinged environment, but it also records the daily dramas of troubled kids trying to survive and the moments of hope they achieve with Mulberry's clear-eyed staff.

A collection of short documentaries, including "Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall," about the 7-million-square-foot South China Mall, which was built in 2005 and is virtually empty; "Nutkin's Last Stand," about the attempt of Britons to save their red squirrels from an influx of North American gray squirrels; "34x25x36," about the Patina V mannequin factory near L.A.; and "City of Cranes," which explores the world of crane operators

This is a story about a wall - the separations it's meant to enforce, and the unintended ones it creates. The security wall being constructed by Israel on the West Bank has divided Palestinian families and communities. It has also isolated the Catholic-run Our Lady of Sorrows nursing home, leaving its feisty residents to face old age in the throes of one of the world's most bitter conflicts.

For Spaniards — and for the world — nothing has expressed their country's traditionally rigid gender roles more powerfully than the image of the male matador. So sacred was the bullfighter's masculinity to Spanish identity that a 1908 law barred women from the sport. Ella Es el Matador reveals the surprising history of the women who made such a law necessary and offers fascinating profiles of two female matadors currently in the arena: the acclaimed Mari Paz Vega and neophyte Eva Florencia. These women are gender pioneers by necessity. But what emerges as their truest motivation is their sheer passion — for bullfighting and the pursuit of a dream.

What is it like to have power over life and death, and yet to struggle with your own humanity? This is the story of acclaimed British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, who has traveled to Ukraine for 15 years to treat patients who have been left to die; of his friend and medical colleague in Kyiv who carries on the fight despite official hostility and archaic surgical conditions; and of a young patient who hopes that Henry can save his life. Tense, heartbreaking and humorous, The English Surgeon is a remarkable depiction of one doctor's commitment to relieving suffering and of the emotional turmoil he undergoes in bringing hope to a desperate people.

Two stories that paint a dramatic portrait of the challenges facing America's public schools — and of the great difference a dedicated principal can make. Tresa Dunbar is a second-year principal at Chicago's Nash Elementary, where 98% of students come from low-income families; in Springfield, Illinois, Kerry Purcell has led Harvard Park Elementary, with similar demographics, for six years. Tod Lending (Omar & Pete, POV 2005) and David Mrazek followed both women over the course of a school year, discovering each one's unique styles yet similar passions. The Principal Story takes the viewer along for an emotional ride that reveals what effective educational leadership looks like in the 21st century.

Rocky Otoo is the Bronx-bred teenage daughter of Ghanaian parents, and she's no pushover. She is a sassy high-achiever bound for college. With freedom in sight, Rocky rebels against her mother's rules. When their relationship reaches a breaking point, Rocky flees to her father, a chief in Ghana. What follows is captured in Bronx Princess, a tumultuous coming-of-age story set in a homeland both familiar and strange. Her precocious — and very American — ideas of a successful, independent life conflict with her father's traditional African values. Reconciling her dual legacies becomes an unexpected chapter in this unforgettable young woman's education.

On call 24 hours a day for the past five years, a group of senior citizens has made history by greeting over 900,000 American troops at a tiny airport in Bangor, Maine. The Emmy-nominated film, The Way We Get By, is an intimate look at three of these greeters as they confront the universal losses that come with aging and rediscover their reason for living. Bill Knight, Jerry Mundy and Joan Gaudet find the strength to overcome their personal battles and transform their lives through service. This inspirational and surprising story shatters the stereotypes of today's senior citizens as the greeters redefine the meaning of community. A co-production of Dungby Productions and ITVS in association with WGBH and Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN) with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

Take a remarkable plunge into the life, art, memories and philosophical reflections of the legendary rocker, poet and artist.

How much do we know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families? Though our food appears the same as ever — a tomato still looks like a tomato — it has been radically transformed. In the Academy Award®-nominated blockbuster Food, Inc., producer-director Robert Kenner and investigative authors Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) lift the veil on the U.S. food industry, revealing surprising and eye-opening facts about what we eat, how it’s produced, who we have become as a nation and where we may go from here. (120:00)

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe examines the life of this radical attorney from a surprising angle. Kunstler’s two daughters from his second marriage grew up lionizing a man already famous for his historic civil rights and anti-war cases. Then, in their teens, they began to be disillusioned by a stubborn man who continued representing some of the most reviled defendants in America — this time accused rapists and terrorists. In this intimate biography, Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler seek to recover the real story of what made their late father one of the most beloved, and hated, lawyers in America. Winner of the L’Oreal Paris Women of Worth Vision Award, 2009 Sundance Film Festival. A co-production of ITVS. (90:00)

The Beaches of Agnès is a 2008 French documentary film directed by Agnès Varda. The film is an autobiographical essay where Varda revisits places from her past, reminisces about life and celebrates her 80th birthday on camera. She has said that it will most likely be her last film.

Though apartheid ended in South Africa in 1994, economic injustices between blacks and whites remain unresolved. As revealed in Yoruba Richen’s incisive Promised Land, the most potentially explosive issue is land. The film follows two black communities as they struggle to reclaim land from white owners, some of whom who have lived there for generations. Amid rising tensions and wavering government policies, the land issue remains South Africa’s “ticking time bomb,” with farreaching consequences for all sides. Promised Land captures multiple perspectives of citizens struggling to create just solutions. A co-production of the National Black Programming Consortium, American Documentary/POV and the Diverse Voices Project, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (60:00)

Good Fortune is a provocative exploration of how massive international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit. In Kenya’s rural countryside, Jackson’s farm is being flooded by an American investor who hopes to alleviate poverty by creating a multimillion-dollar rice farm. Across the country in Nairobi, Silva’s home and business in Africa’s largest shantytown are being demolished as part of a U.N. slum-upgrading project. The gripping stories of two Kenyans battling to save their homes from large-scale development present a unique opportunity see foreign aid through eyes of the people it is intended to help. (90:00)

Past and present collide as award-winning filmmaker Natalia Almada (Al Otro Lado, POV 2006) brings to life audio recordings she inherited from her grandmother, daughter of Plutarco Elias Calles, a revolutionary general who became Mexico’s president in 1924. In his time, Calles was called El Jefe Maximo (Foremost Chief). Today he is remembered as El Quema-Curas (Priest Burner) and as a dictator who ruled through puppet presidents until his exile in 1936. Airing during the centennial of the Mexican Revolution, El General moves between a daughter’s memories as she grapples with history’s portrayal of her father and the weight of his legacy on Mexico today. Winner of the 2009 Sundance Film Festival U.S. Directing Award: Documentary. A co-production of ITVS in association with Latino Public Broadcasting. A co-presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting. (90:00)

Imagine being picked up off the street, told you have committed a murder you know nothing about and then finding yourself sentenced to 20 years in jail. In December 2005 this happened to Toño Zúñiga in Mexico City and, like thousands of other innocent people, he was wrongfully imprisoned. This is the story of two young lawyers and their struggle to free Zúñiga. With no background in film, Roberto Hernández and Layda Negrete set about recording the injustices they were witnessing, enlisting acclaimed director Geoffrey Smith to tell this dramatic story.

In his search for “somewhere I could point my camera into pure space,” award-winning photographer Murray Fredericks began making annual solo camping trips to remote Lake Eyre and its salt flats in South Australia. These trips have yielded remarkable photos of a boundless, desolate yet beautiful environment where sky, water and land merge. Made in collaboration with documentary filmmaker Michael Angus, Salt is the film extension of Fredericks’ work at Lake Eyre, interweaving his photos and video diary with time-lapse sequences to offer viewers the liberating and disorienting experience of being thrown into an infinite dimension of mind and spirit. (60:00)

Scottish filmmaker Amy Hardie has built a career making science documentaries that reflect her rational temperament. When she dreamed one night that her horse was dying, only to wake and find the horse dead, she dismissed the incident as coincidental. Then she dreamed she would die at age 48 — the next year. When Hardie does get ill, just as the dream predicted, her search takes her to neuroscience experts and finally a shaman. The Edge of Dreaming is an evocative, intimate chronicle of that year and a fascinating investigation into the human subconscious. (90:00)

What is it like to be torn from your Chinese foster family, put on a plane with strangers and wake up in a new country, family and culture? Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy is the story of Fang Sui Yong, an 8-year-old orphan, and the Sadowskys, the Long Island Jewish family that travels to China to adopt her. Sui Yong is one of 70,000 Chinese children now being raised in the United States. Through her eyes, we witness her struggle with a new identity as she transforms from a timid child into someone that no one — neither her new family nor she — could have imagined. A co-production of American Documentary/POV and the Diverse Voices Project, presented in association with the Center for Asian American Media, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (90:00)

Off and Running is the story of Brooklyn teenager Avery, a track star with a bright future. She is the adopted African-American child of white Jewish lesbians. Her two brothers are black and Puerto Rican and Korean. Though it may not look typical, Avery’s household is like most American homes — until Avery writes to her birth mother and the response throws her into crisis. She struggles over her “true” identity, the circumstances of her adoption and her estrangement from black culture. Just when it seems as if her life will unravel, Avery begins to make sense of her identity, with inspiring results. A co-production of ITVS in association with American Documentary/POV and the Diverse Voices Project, with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (90:00)

Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for a Korean adoptee who came to the United States in 1966. Told to keep her true identity secret from her new American family, the 8-year-old girl quickly forgot she had ever been anyone else. But why had her identity been switched? And who was the real Cha Jung Hee? In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee is the search to find the answers, as acclaimed filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem (First Person Plural, POV 2000) returns to her native Korea to find her “double,” the mysterious girl whose place she took in America. A co-production of ITVS in association with the Center for Asian American Media and American Documentary/POV. (60:00)

Filmed in Yemen and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, The Oath interweaves the stories of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden’s former bodyguard, and Salim Hamdan, a prisoner at Guantanamo facing war crimes charges. Directed by Laura Poitras (Flag Wars, POV 2003; the Oscar®-nominated My Country, My Country, POV 2006), The Oath unfolds via a narrative rife with plot reversals and betrayals that ultimately leads to Osama bin Laden, 9/11, Guantanamo and the U.S. Supreme Court. Winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Excellence in Cinematography Award: Documentary. A co-production of ITVS in association with American Documentary/POV. (90:00)

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is a 2009 documentary film directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith. The film follows Daniel Ellsberg and explores the events leading up to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which exposed the top-secret military history of the United States involvement in Vietnam.

When Chris Hegedus and D A Pennebaker, award-winning filmmakers of The War Room, Startup.com and Don’t Look Back, turn their sights on the competition for the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France awards, the country’s Nobel Prize for pastry, you’re in for a treat. In Kings of Pastry, 16 chefs, including Jacquy Pfeiffer, co-founder of Chicago’s French Pastry School, whip up the most gorgeous, delectable, gravity-defying concoctions and edge-of-your-seat drama as they deliver their spun-sugar desserts to the display table. The inevitable disasters and successes prove both poignant and hilarious. (90:00)

My Perestroika is an intimate look at the last generation of Soviet children. Five classmates go from living sheltered childhoods to experiencing the hopes of Gorbachev’s reforms and the confusion of the USSR’s dissolution, to searching for their places in today’s Moscow. With candor and humor, the punk rocker, single mother, entrepreneur and married teachers paint a picture of the challenges, dreams and disappointments of those raised behind the Iron Curtain. Through first-person testimony, vérité footage and vintage home movies, this beautifully crafted documentary reveals a Russia rarely seen on film. A co-production of Red Square Productions/Bungalow Town Productions and ITVS International in association with American Documentary | POV. An Official Selection of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. (90:00)

Sweetgrass presents a riveting and poetic portrait of the American West just as one of its traditional ways of life dies out. Shot amidst the grandeur of Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, the film follows the last modern day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into the breathtaking and often dangerous mountains for summer pasture. Magnificently photographed and unsparingly candid, Sweetgrass discovers a world of harsh beauty and arduous labor, where humans still work in rugged intimacy with nature. An Official Selection of the 2010 New York Film Festival. (90:00)

The Khmer Rouge slaughtered nearly two million people in the late 1970s. Yet the “killing fields” of Cambodia have remained largely unexplained. Until now, in Enemies of the People. Enter Thet Sambath, an unassuming, yet cunning, investigative journalist who lost his family in the conflict and spends a decade gaining the trust of the men and women who perpetrated the massacres. Sambath and co-director Rob Lemkin record shocking testimony, never before seen or heard, from the foot soldiers who slit throats and from Pol Pot’s right-hand man, the notorious Brother Number Two. Winner of the 2010 Sundance World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Prize. (90:00)

The Donkey Library is the story of a librarian — and a library — like no other. A decade ago, Colombian teacher Luis Soriano was inspired to spend his weekends bringing a modest collection of precious books, via two hard-working donkeys, to the children of a poor and violence-ridden province. As Soriano braves armed bands, drug traffickers, snakes and heat, his library on hooves carries an inspirational message about education and a better future for Colombia. His efforts have attracted worldwide attention — and imitators — but his story has never been better told than in this heartwarming yet unsentimental film. (60:00)

Mugabe and the White African, much of which was filmed clandestinely, tells an alarming story from one of the world’s most troubled nations. In Zimbabwe, de facto dictator Robert Mugabe has unleashed a “land reform” program aimed at driving whites from the country through violence and intimidation. One proud “white African,” however, has challenged Mugabe with human rights abuses under international law. The courage Michael Campbell and his family display as they defend their farm — in court and on the ground — makes for a film as inspiring as it is harrowing. (90:00)

From a land of long, dark winters comes Steam of Life, a moody, comic and moving study of Finnish men as framed by the national obsession with the sauna. There, they come together to sweat out not only the grime of contemporary life, but also their grief, hopes, joys and memories. Beautifully and hauntingly shot, the acclaimed film provides a surprising glimpse into the lives of Finnish men and a remarkable depiction of the troubled and often reticent hearts of contemporary Western men. (60:00)

A one-hour collection of documentary shorts by established and emerging filmmakers, including:

Big Birding Day – David Wilson offers a glimpse into the world of competitive birdwatching, as three friends attempt to see as many species as possible in 24 hours.

Flawed – Artist/filmmaker Andrea Dorfman's drawings burst colorfully into life as she animates the story of her longdistance relationship with a man whose profession — plastic surgery — gives her plenty of fodder.

StoryCorps – StoryCorps brings its Peabody Award-winning storytelling to POV for a second season. POV’s animated shorts use original recordings that have become beloved public-radio “driveway moments.” Funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Miss Devine – Cousins James Ransom and Cherie Johnson recall their inimitable Sunday school teacher, Miss Lizzie Devine. This animation, set in the small Florida town of the cousins’ memories, will have you laughing as the cousins remember the fearsome Miss Devine.

No More Questions – Strong-willed grandmother Kay Wang allowed her son and granddaughter to drag her into a StoryCorps booth. Though Kay was reluctant, she had stories to tell — from disobeying her mother and rebuffing suitors while growing up in China to late-life adventures as a store detective for Bloomingdale’s.

Six Weeks – Six weeks is the period in which parents of newborn babies in Poland may decide to give up a child for adoption. Marcin Janos Krawczyk looks at one child’s fate through the eyes of the mother who must make her irreversible decision and the joyful parents who adopt her baby.

Tiffany – Beverly Morris tells of her ongoing struggle to hold on to the most contested object in her divorce — the Tiffany lamp, in this animated short.

In 2009, Janus Metz and cameraman Lars Skree accompanied a platoon of Danish soldiers to Armadillo, a combat operations base in southern Afghanistan. For six months, often while under fire, they captured the lives of the young soldiers fighting the Taliban in a hostile and confusing environment, where official rhetoric about helping civilians too often met the unforgiving reality of being a foreign occupier. Winner of the Critics’ Week Grand Prix at Cannes, Armadillo is one of the most dramatic and candid accounts of combat to come out of Afghanistan.

The story of Bradley Crowder and David McKay, who were accused of intending to firebomb the 2008 Republican National Convention, is a dramatic tale of idealism, loyalty, crime and betrayal. Better This World follows the radicalization of these boyhood friends from Midland, Texas, under revolutionary activist Brandon Darby. The results: eight homemade bombs, multiple domestic terrorism charges and a high-stakes entrapment defense hinging on the actions of a controversial FBI informant. The film goes to the heart of the war on terror and its impact on civil liberties and political dissent in post-9/11 America.

If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front explores two of America’s most pressing issues — environmentalism and terrorism — by lifting the veil on a radical environmental group the FBI calls America’s “number one domestic terrorism threat.” Former Earth Liberation Front member Daniel McGowan faces life in prison for two multimillion-dollar arsons against Oregon timber companies. What turned this working-class kid from Queens into an eco-warrior? Marshall Curry (Oscar®-nominated Street Fight, POV 2005) provides a nuanced and provocative account that is part coming-of-age story, part cautionary tale and part cops-and-robbers thriller.

One hundred years ago, American teachers established the English-speaking public school system of the Philippines. Now, in a striking turnabout, American schools are recruiting Filipino teachers. The Learning is the story of four Filipino women who reluctantly leave their families and schools to teach in Baltimore. They hope to use their higher salaries to transform their families’ impoverished lives back home. But the women bring idealistic visions of the teacher’s craft and of life in America, which soon collide with Baltimore’s tough realities.

Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year in the world’s largest human migration. Last Train Home takes viewers on a heart-stopping journey with the Zhangs, a couple who left infant children behind for factory jobs 16 years ago, hoping their wages would lift their children to a better life. They return to a family growing distant and a daughter longing to leave school for unskilled work. As the Zhangs navigate their new world, Last Train Home paints a rich, human portrait of China’s rush to economic development. An EyeSteelFilm production in association with ITVS International. An Official Selection of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Winner of Best Feature-Length Documentary Award, 2009 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. (90:00)

From a small town in northern Michigan to the mountains of Afghanistan, "Where Soldiers Come From" follows the journey of childhood friends who join the National Guard after graduating from high school. It chronicles the young men's transformation from teenagers to soldiers to 23-year-old combat veterans. The film offers an intimate look at the young men who fight our wars.

'Racing Dreams' chronicles a year in the life of three "tweens" who dream of becoming NASCAR drivers. Though they aren't old enough for driver's licenses, Brandon, Josh, and Annabeth race extreme go-karts at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour in the World Karting Association's national series. The film is a humorous and heartbreaking portrait of racing, young love and family struggle.

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There are over one million Gypsies living in America today, and most people don’t know anything about them. It is one man’s obsessive pursuit of justice and dignity that led filmmaker Jasmine Dellal into their hidden thousand-year-old culture. Charming and outspoken, Spokane resident Jimmy Marks defies widely held stereotypes–and his own people’s code of secrecy–to unlock a Romani world in America.

High Tibetan Buddhist Master Chögyal Namkhal Norbu teaches in the West, while his son, Yeshi, breaks from tradition and embraces the modern world.

In a stunning milestone for justice in Central America, a Guatemalan court recently charged former dictator Efraín Rios Montt with genocide for his brutal war in the 1980s — and Pamela Yates’ 1983 documentary, When the Mountains Tremble, provided key evidence for bringing the indictment. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator tells the extraordinary story of how a film helped tip the scales of justice.

Is darkness becoming extinct? A meditation on the human relationship to the stars.

Every four seconds a romance novel published by Harlequin or its British counterpart, Mills & Boon, is sold somewhere in the world. Julie Moggan’s 'Guilty Pleasures' takes an amusing and touching look at this global phenomenon. Ironies abound in the contrasts between the everyday lives of the books’ readers and the fantasy worlds that offer them escape.

Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim preacher, founded a Qur’an school for girls in Damascus, Syria, 30 years ago. Every summer, her students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam. A surprising cultural shift is underway - women are claiming space within the mosque. Shot right before the uprising in Syria erupted, 'The Light in Her Eyes' offers an extraordinary portrait of a leader.

Up Heartbreak Hill chronicles the lives of three high school seniors living on the Navajo Nation and struggling to shape their identities as both Native American and modern American. They must decide whether to stay in their community - a place inextricably woven into the fiber of their beings - or leave in pursuit of educational and economic opportunities.

Five shorts, including "The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement," about an octogenarian Alabama barber and WWII veteran who carried the American flag across the bridge on the first Selma to Montgomery march of 1965; and "Sin País (Without Country)," about illegal immigrants from Guatemala who, 20 years after arriving in the U.S., are deported to their home country. Also: three StoryCorps animations, including "Eyes on the Stars," about astronaut Ronald McNair.

Jonathan Demme’s portrait of post-Katrina New Orleans tells the story of Carolyn Parker, a lifelong resident of the Lower Ninth Ward, who is fighting for the right to rebuild her home and community.

From dusk to dawn, 'El Velador' accompanies Martin, a guard who watches over the extravagant mausoleums of some of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords. In the labyrinth of the cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us that, amid the turmoil of a drug war that has claimed more than 50,000 lives, ordinary existence persists in Mexico and quietly defies the dead.

Exposing shocking corruption within the judicial system of the Philippines in one of the most sensational trials in the country’s history. Two grieving mothers, entangled in a case that ends a nation’s use of capital punishment but fails to free an innocent man, dedicate more than a decade to executing or saving him.

When a Navajo couple uncovers a hidden link between their children’s rare genetic disorder and the American government’s conquest of their tribe, their lives are changed forever.

Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for the Light is a remarkable meditation on memory, history and eternity. Chile’s remote Atacama Desert, 10,000 feet above sea level, provides stunningly clear views of the heavens for astronomers. But it also holds secrets from the past: human remains, from pre-Columbian mummies to the bones of political prisoners "disappeared" during the Pinochet dictatorship.

A veteran reporter and his colleagues at an independent newsweekly defy powerful drug cartels and corrupt officials to continue publishing the news in Mexico.

A lyrical exploration of youth, beauty and ambition, seen through the eyes of a conflicted American scout and a 13-year-old she discovers.

Season 26 opens with "Homegoings," which profiles Harlem funeral director Isaiah Owens, the son of a South Carolina sharecropper whose fascination with burials began as a boy, while also examining the traditions of African-American funerals. Owens' fascination with burials dates to his childhood: He buried matchsticks at age 5, then progressed to actual dead things, including chickens, dogs and even a mule. He moved to NYC at age 17 to learn the craft and, in time, opened his own funeral home.

Special Flight is a dramatic account of the plight of undocumented foreigners at the Frambois detention center in Geneva, Switzerland, and of the wardens who struggle to reconcile humane values with the harsh realities of a strict deportation system. The 25 Frambois inmates featured are among the thousands of asylum seekers and illegal immigrants imprisoned without charge or trial and facing deportation to their native countries, where they fear repression or even death. The film, made in Switzerland, is a heart-wrenching exposé of the contradictions between the country's compassionate social policies and the intractability of its immigration laws.

Herman Wallace has spent more than 40 years in a 6’ x 9’ prison cell. He works with artist Jackie Sumell to imagine his "dream home," questioning justice and punishment in America.

Three teens in a Southern California town wrestle with questions of love and friendship along with adult realities of financial uncertainty.

The modern-day love story of a guy from small-town Illinois who reaches out to a beautiful New York City art student from Korea. They meet in the only place that such different people might ever find each other—online.

High Tech, Low Life follows two of China’s first citizen-reporters, bloggers who are fighting censorship to document the underside of the country’s rapid economic development.

A 4-year-old, a teenager and an adult, all on the autism spectrum and at pivotal moments in their lives, work with their perceptual and behavioral differences in a "neurotypical" world.

For the first time, Israeli military and legal professionals who devised the legal framework behind the occupation are interviewed about this system, which mirrors the country’s toughest moral quandaries.

Oscar®nominee 5 Broken Cameras depicts life in a West Bank village where a security fence is being built. The film was shot by a Palestinian and co-directed by an Israeli.

Seven players with 620 years between them compete in the Over 80 World Table Tennis Championships. Ping Pong is a meditation on mortality and a joyous tribute to the human spirit.

The World Before Her is a tale of two Indias: In one, a small-town girl competes in the Miss India pageant. In the other, a militant woman leads a fundamentalist Hindu camp for girls.

A Newark, N.J. public high school teacher races against the clock to find a place in the world for her students with autism before they graduate and "age out" of a unique and caring support system.

Brooklyn public school I.S. 318, serving mostly minority students from working-class families, has won more than 30 national chess championships, the country’s best record.

In 1964 a group of 7-year-old children were interviewed for the groundbreaking documentary Seven Up. Michael Apted has been back to film them every seven years since. Now they are 56.

Celebrate the transformative power of listening with this animated special from the oral history project StoryCorps, which captures intimate conversations among everyday people.

American Promise spans 13 years as Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, middle-class African-American parents in Brooklyn, N.Y., turn their cameras on their son, Idris, and his best friend, Seun, who make their way through one of the most prestigious private schools in the country. Chronicling the boys' divergent paths from kindergarten through high school graduation at Manhattan's Dalton School, this provocative, intimate documentary presents complicated truths about America's struggle to come of age on issues of race, class and opportunity