Six teams of media creators and technologists have been selected to participate in POV Hackathon 5, POV’s nonfiction media lab that since 2012 has provided matchmaking and mentorship for re-inventing the documentary for the web.

The POV Hackathon 5 lab and final screening will take place at the Center for Social Innovation in New York City on the weekend of May 10-11, 2014. RSVP to attend the May 11 screening at http://povhackathon5.eventbrite.com.

Find out more about the projects below. We’ll be announcing all of the participants, mentors and judges on Wednesday, May 7. Be the first to meet the “hackers” by subscribing to POV’s Documentary Blog or follow us on Twitter @povdocs!

The Angola Project


Civil war destroyed Angola’s Benguela railway, which opened the African interior to commerce in the 1920s. Now it’s being rebuilt by Chinese workers. A filmmaker has traveled the route and is sharing his personal connections in an interactive documentary.

Bisbee


Bisbee, Arizona, was once a thriving copper-mining town. Now, its population is dwindling as its youth leave to find opportunity elsewhere. The interactive documentary Bisbee aims to use the power of digital media to encourage dialogue in the rural borderlands of the American Southwest among the people who could lead to its renewal.

Karachi Circular Railroad


This interactive documentary immerses viewers with the sights and sounds of Karachi as the government contemplates a multi-billion-dollar investment in the defunct Karachi Circular Railroad.

Living Los Sures


A web-documentary project years in the making, and an echo of a documentary produced 30 years ago, returns to POV Hackathon to develop a new interactive storytelling tool rooted in a specific geography — in this case, the Southside neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Noriginals: The Art of Uncreativity

http://vimeo.com/85545494
With your every tweet, you’ve been contributing to what may be the world’s largest documentary platform. The Noriginals app aims to show you a side of Twitter you’ve never seen before.

One Way Home


Since the 1990’s, a grassroots charity has been reuniting Texans affected by AIDS with their families for what is often their last trip. One Way Home is a documentary game that places viewers within the AIDS epidemic though these travelers’ stories.

Meet Some of the Participants from POV Hackathon 5

We’ll be announcing the full list of participants on Wednesday, May 7, 2014. Here’s a cross-section of the media makers, technologists and mentors:

  • Christopher Allen is the founder and executive artistic director of the Brooklyn-based center for documentary art UnionDocs.
  • Ann Bennett is a filmmaker, writer and interactive producer exploring the nexus of history, culture and technology. She is a producer of Through a Lens Darkly, which premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
  • Brian Chirls is an online video and distribution pioneer known for a range of online innovations, first with the groundbreaking film Four Eyed Monsters, and continuing with online experiments with artists such as OK Go.
  • Amanda Hickman teaches multimedia storytelling and data visualization at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. For more than a decade, she’s worked at the intersection of journalism and civic engagement at such organizations as DocumentCloud and Gotham Gazette.
  • Takaaki Okada is a creative director, consultant, photographer and film editor who has worked with organizations as varied as Pentagram, The National Film Board of Canada, Magnum Foundation, ESRI and the NHK. He was also a co-founder of Condition One.
  • Colin Rothfels is the creator of Anagramatron, a bot that retweets Twitter anagrams.
  • Jeff Soyk is the co-creator of the Peabody Award-winning interactive documentary Hollow.
  • Jeremy Xido is the director of the documentary Death Metal Angola, which has screened on every continent (including Antarctica) at festivals such as Rotterdam and DOC NYC.

POV Hackathon 5 will take place at the Center for Social Innovation in New York City on the weekend of May 10-11, 2014. To attend the final screening, RSVP at http://povhackathon5.eventbrite.com.

Note: The teams from POV Hackathon 6 in Los Angeles (May 17-18, 2014) will be announced on Wednesday, May 7, 2014 on POV’s Documentary Blog.

About POV Hackathon
Since 2012, the POV Hackathon lab series has provided structure and mentorship for visionary media makers and inventive technologists to collaborate and re-imagine nonfiction storytelling for the web. POV Hackathon is organized by POV, the award-winning PBS documentary series. POV Hackathon is supported by the Fledgling Fund and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. http://www.pbs.org/pov/hackathon/

About the Center for Social Innovation
The Centre for Social Innovation
The Centre for Social Innovation is a coworking space, community, and launchpad for people who are changing the world, with three locations in Toronto and a location in New York City. We provide our members with the tools they need to accelerate their success and amplify their impact. Together, we’re building a movement of nonprofits, for-profits, entrepreneurs, artists, and activists working across sectors from farming to finance and everything in between. We’re catalyzing new ideas for a better world. Find out more at socialinnovation.org.

Published by

POV Staff
POV Staff
POV (a cinema term for "point of view") is television's longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films. POV premieres 14-16 of the best, boldest and most innovative programs every year on PBS. Since 1988, POV has presented over 400 films to public television audiences across the country. POV films are known for their intimacy, their unforgettable storytelling and their timeliness, putting a human face on contemporary social issues.