We are excited to announce that we’ll be streaming a collection of POV’s films over the holidays and into the new year. Cozy up next to the fireplace and watch while you can!
Listening is an Act of Love (2013)
The first-ever animated special from StoryCorps celebrates the transformative power of listening. Listening Is an Act of Love features six stories from 10 years of the innovative oral history project. Each story reflects StoryCorps founder Dave Isay’s fundamental belief: “We can learn so much about the people all around us — even about the people we already know — just by taking the time to have a conversation.” Framing these intimate conversations from across the country is an interview between Isay and his 9-year-old nephew, Benji. As always, the selections provoke both tears and laughter — and highlight the simple joy found in sitting together and asking life’s important questions.
Streaming until December 28, 2013
Homegoings (2013)
An Official Selection of MoMA’s 2013 Documentary Fortnight.
Through the eyes of funeral director Isaiah Owens, the beauty and grace of African-American funerals are brought to life. Filmed at Owens Funeral Home in New York City’s historic Harlem neighborhood, Homegoings takes an up-close look at the rarely seen world of undertaking in the black community, where funeral rites draw on a rich palette of tradition, history and celebration. Combining cinéma vérité with intimate interviews and archival photographs, the film paints a portrait of the dearly departed, their grieving families and a man who sends loved ones “home.”
Streaming until January 7, 2013
Guilty Pleasures (2012)
An Official Selection of the 2011 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam.
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. Guilty Pleasures portrays five romance devotees who must, ultimately, find their dreams in the real world.
Streaming until January 14, 2014
Girl Model (2013)
An Official Selection of the 2011 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Winner, 2011 POV | Alpha Cine Award.
Girl Model strips away the façade of the modeling industry by following two people whose lives intersect because of it. Ashley is a deeply conflicted American model scout, and 13-year-old Nadya, plucked from a remote Siberian village and promised a lucrative career in Japan, is her latest discovery. As the young girl searches for glamour and an escape from poverty, she confronts the harsh realities of a culture that worships youth — and an industry that makes perpetual childhood a globally traded commodity.
Streaming from December 24, 2013 until February 1, 2014
The World Before Her
(2013)
Winner, World Documentary Competition Award, 2012 Tribeca Film Festival.
The World Before Her is a tale of two Indias. In one, Ruhi Singh is a small-town girl competing in Bombay to win the Miss India pageant—a ticket to stardom in a country wild about beauty contests. In the other India, Prachi Trivedi is the young, militant leader of a fundamentalist Hindu camp for girls, where she preaches violent resistance to Western culture, Christianity and Islam. Moving between these divergent realities, the film creates a lively, provocative portrait of the world’s largest democracy at a critical transitional moment—and of two women who hope to shape its future.
Streaming from December 24, 2013 until February 1, 2014
Scout’s Honor (2001)
Witness how a 12-year-old Boy Scout named Steven Cozza launches a campaign to overturn the Boy Scouts’ anti-gay policy. From Petaluma, California to the Supreme Court, the film chronicles a modern interpretation of the scouting ideals of courage and honor.
Streaming until March 18, 2014
Kelly Loves Tony (1998)
She’s a straight-A student; he’s trying to leave gang life behind. A camcorder becomes both witness and confidante for these markedly singular yet utterly typical teens as they self-document the trials of growing up too fast and too soon in urban America. Emmy award-winning filmmaker Spencer Nakasako deftly guides this video diary of a young Southeast Asian couple wrestling with the demands of parenting, love, dreams and disillusionment in the nebulous cultural zone between first and second generation immigrant life.
Streaming until July 14, 2014
a.k.a. Don Bonus (1996)
A raw and revealing video diary by a Cambodian-born teenager who turns the camera on himself. Under the guidance of veteran filmmaker Spencer Nakasako, Sokly Don Bonus Ny offers a stark look at coming of age in San Francisco’s inner city where he confronts the reality of the American Dream.
Streaming until July 14, 2014
POV has short documentaries that are also available for free streaming, including xoxosms, the Emmy-nominated Sound of Vision, and many more.
More award-winning POV films will available for streaming starting mid-January, including Last Train Home (January 13) and My Perestroika (January 16).
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