In 2017, a mosque was destroyed by fire in the South Texas city of Victoria. It became a national news story. There were obvious questions to be raised by those events—questions of racism, immigration, Islamophobia, and what it means to be an American. Lu Li’s A Town Called Victoria is a three episode series on…
According to AARP, 53 million Americans are caregivers for family members dealing with health issues of various kinds. Some of us have been through that experience; many more will face such times. Daniel Lui, a news anchor at MSNBC, had to make major adjustments in his career and life to help care for his father…
?Surely we belong to God and to Him we shall return.? In Zeshawn Ali?s Two Gods we see the struggles of people dealing with violence in their lives and neighborhoods. The documentary set mostly in Newark, New Jersey, focuses on Hanif, a Muslim casket maker and ritual body washer. Hanif knows the dangers of the…
Does a nearly forty year old documentary still hold relevance? A newly restored HD version of Dark Circle is streaming on various outlets. The film, directed by Christopher Beaver, Judy Irving, and Ruth Landry, was shortlisted for Oscar consideration in 1983 and won an Emmy in 1989, when it finally made it to PBS as…
?[It] doesn?t go away. It goes away politically/? Most of us associate Agent Orange with the Vietnam War. The defoliant was used extensively in that war, both to eliminate the cover of jungle and to destroy crops. It also became a major veterans? issue, when many veterans contracted cancers. But The People vs. Agent Orange,…
What are parents to do when they need to work long shifts or multiple jobs? Through the Night by documentary director Loira Limbal takes us into a 24-hour daycare center in New Rochelle, New York. There Deloris (Nunu) Hogan and her husband Patrick care day and night for several children up to 12 years old….
?She believes that shining a light is the most important thing.? A President who claims news outlets lie. Social media bots that spread misinformation. Intimidation of reporters by both governmental and unofficial sources. A leading reporter arrested multiple times. The government, meanwhile, is conducting its war on drugs by killings across the country. Yet the…
Corridos are Mexican folk ballads. Sometimes those ballads are used to relate history that is deemed important. The Ballad of Esequiel Hern?ndez is essentially a film corrido that recalls the 1997 shooting of an 18 year old high school student on the US-Mexico border by US Marines. The Emmy-nominated film, directed by Kieran Fitzgerald and…
Most people know of Joseph Pulitzer because of the Pulitzer Prizes awarded each year. They may associate him with yellow journalism. But there is much more to this man as we discover in Joseph Pulitzer: The Voice of the People, opening in theaters and coming later to the PBS American Masters series. As Nicholson Baker…
?He painted the soul, not just the image.? The PBS series American Masters is airing an episode focusing on the painter Andrew Wyeth. Wyeth was one of the 20th century?s most famous magical-realist painters. He had both popular and critical success. But the popular success also led to a time of critical rejection as abstract…
