The pace of our world seemed to hit overdrive in 2017, so we’re taking a moment as the year ends to celebrate our partners who did incredible work in their communities over the last 365 days.

Here’s our year by the numbers:

A record-breaking 868 community screenings of POV films – here’s just a few of our favorites:

  • The Jupiter Branch of the Palm Beach Country Library System in Jupiter, FL, screening of The Islands and the Whales featured a talk by Dr. Jeremy Kizka about local water mercury levels.
  • The Minnesota Asian Pacific American Bar Association led a discussion about Of Civil Wrongs and Rights, and lessons to be learned from Fred Korematsu and Executive Order 9066, which authorized the internment of Japanese Americans.
  • Raising Bertie was screened at Orange Correctional Center in Chapel Hill, NC, with a post-screening discussion led by a Bertie County-native incarcerated there.
  • The Department of Wildlife of the North Slope in Utqiagvik, Alaska—the northernmost community in the United States—hosted a screening of The Islands and the Whales for staff and locals. Like the Faroese people featured in the film, some members of this community take part in a traditional whale hunt.
  • The San Diego branch of the S.U.C.C.E.S.S. Group, a youth mentorship program, screened All the Difference and held a lively discussion with the program’s mentees about what the documentary meant to them.
  • Wisconsin Public Television partnered with Goodman Community Center to screen Do Not Resist, followed by a community dialogue with youth representatives and two officers from the Madison Police Department. The engagement was supported by Open Society Foundations as part of the Our America: Documentary in Dialogue series.
  • Photoville hosted us for the third year in a row: this time, for a conversation between award-winning filmmakers Kirsten Johnson, Whitney Dow and Marco Williams, about their films’ Cameraperson and Two Towns of Jasper.

43,489+ total attendees at community screenings

Screenings in 45 states, including 20 screenings across the country honoring World Refugee Day

1,280 new members of our relaunched POV Community Network

87% of community screenings hosts said their event met or exceeded their goals

83% of educators said students were more likely to engage in social issues outside the classroom after using POV resources

70% of screening attendees said they plan to discuss the film’s issues with friends and family

Our team accomplished a lot this year, too:

We published 52 new resources for POV films, including discussion guides, lesson plans and reading lists, in collaboration with 24 industry experts

40 features and shorts were added to the POV DVD Lending Library (with more to come in 2018!)

98% of our community screening hosts said they would host more POV screenings in the future

Thank you to our community of partners who worked with us this year to leverage the power of documentary film as bridge-builder, conversation-starter and eye-opener. See you in 2018!

Published by

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.