Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup. Today, he raises some questions that came to mind as he watched the most recent POV film. So, I’ll repeat what I said in my Monday post that I think The Last Conquistador is a really good […]

It sounded like a perfect partnership. Renowned sculptor John Houser dreamed of building the world’s tallest bronze equestrian statue, a stunning monument to the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate that would pay tribute to the contributions Hispanic people made to building the American West. The city of El Paso, Texas, was looking to improve its […]

When John J. Valadez and Cristina Ibarra, learned that the city of El Paso had commissioned a sculptor to create a statue of Juan de Oñate, they knew they wanted to document the controversial public arts project that had come to be seen as a monument to culture by some, and as a glorification of […]

On Tuesday night, you’re going to get to see a very compelling doc called The Last Conquistador, about sculptor John Houser‘s building of the largest bronze equestrian statue in El Paso. The good people at POV gave me a DVD screener of the film, so I got to see it and I have a lot […]

On August 12th, POV will broadcast Belarusian Waltz by Andrzej Fidyk. The film features an idiosyncratic man named Alexander Pushkin, who shares a name with the great Russian Romantic poet, but turns out to be a different breed of artist altogether. Belarus has been called “Europe’s last dictatorship.” Since 1994, Alexander Lukashenko has ruled the […]

Today, we continue looking ahead to our upcoming season. On Tuesday, July 15, POV will broadcast The Last Conquistador, by John Valadez and Cristina Ibarra. 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 the Spanish […]

Earlier this month, I headed to Austin for my first SXSW festival. I attended both the interactive and film portions of the festival, and found myself quickly overwhelmed by all the panels, conversations and parties that transform this college town into a creative mecca every March. I kept thinking, if I were ten years younger, […]

This weekend, the documentary The Unforeseen will begin trickling into theaters. On the surface, it’s about urban sprawl in Austin, Texas. It traces the history of the booming growth of that city, and the tensions that arose between developers and environmentalists trying to protect a natural spring-fed watering hole called Barton Springs. As a piece […]

Adele Horne is the filmmaker behind The Tailenders (POV 2006), which examines missionary activity, the loss of languages around the world and global capitalism in an unusual and essayistic way. Adele, winner of the “Truer Than Fiction” Award at the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards, writes in with her thoughts on the history of essay films. […]

Last August, POV aired Andrew Walton‘s Arctic Son, set in the remote village of Old Crow in the Canadian Yukon. In the film, we watch as a father and his son are reunited after almost 25 years apart. Stan Jr. turns to art to express his emotions and to share his view of the world […]

Last week, POV aired Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock’s latest film, Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner. Viewers wrote in with questions about the film for Ms. Mock via email and via blog comments. She’ll be answering a selection of those questions on the POV Blog this week. Question: Wrestling With Angels is about […]

The early reviews for tonight’s broadcast of Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner are in. The Hollywood Reporter calls the film a “spellbinding look at Kushner as it catches him at work, with his family and out at the podium speaking about political problems he sees in this country.” The Denver Post‘s Joanne Ostrow notes, […]

Next Wednesday, December 12th, Oscar-winning director Freida Lee Mock’s Wrestling with Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner airs on POV at 9 PM (check your local listings). If you don’t know Tony Kushner and his work in the theater, here’s your opportunity to meet the man who has been called “the most charming dissident around.” Since the […]

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock returns to POV on December 12th with her new film Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner. In the film, Mock followed the acclaimed playwright from 2001 to 2004, documenting his creative process, his collaborations with actors, composers and directors, and his steadfast commitment to political activism. In 1995, Freida […]

This week’s new docs all seem to focus on already well-known figures. Incidentally, all of them happen to be white men… Jonathan Demme’s Jimmy Carter Man From Plains followed the former president during his book tour for Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” an accordingly to most critics, portrays Carter in the most flattering of lights. The […]

Our weekly doc roundup collects critical reactions to some current documentary releases in the theaters and on DVD. IN THEATERS NOW Helvetica, the documentary about a typeface, gets four stars from the Chicago Tribune, which calls the film “…80 unexpectedly blissful minutes.” But apparently, 80 minutes was too long for the New York Times, which […]