As we prepare to ring in the new year, we thought we’d take this opportunity to look back on the Web features that POV viewers liked most and to create a year-end list of our own. In 2008, the most popular features on the POV website were the ones that followed the characters featured in […]

Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup. Well, it’s election week and certainly in my lifetime, it’s never felt like more was stake. I know a lot of people are already getting ready to celebrate an Obama victory, but I’m not. Nothing, in my […]

Freelance writer Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive, blogs about documentaries and the Web in her column, Outside the Frame, published every other Wednesday. Is there any stone left unturned in a modern presidential campaign? This question was posed by New York Times film critic Janet Maslin in her 1993 review of The […]

Next Tuesday, November 4, 2008, millions of voters across America will take to the polls and cast their ballots to determine the next president of the United States. When you’re in the voting booth, and the curtains are closed, you’ll be making an important contribution to American democracy and making your voice heard. But are […]

Roger Weisberg is the director of Critical Condition, which aired on POV on September 30, 2008 and is streaming in its entirety online until November 11, 2008. After the broadcast, many viewers wrote with questions for Roger. Read on for Weisberg’s responses to some of the questions he received. Margo asks: What can I and […]

Our friends at Arts Engine, the non-profit media organization that produced Katy Chevigny‘s Election Day have just written in to let us know that as the election approaches, they’re stepping up their campaign to make sure that people get to exercise their right to vote this year and encouraging people to host viewing parties. Read […]

Maybe it’s the Obama campaign, but the activist in me is coming out and I’ve got something I’m fired up about. I have to admit, it’s not entirely a selfless cause. It’s something that could have great political impact, but, just as important, it’s something that could make us all laugh. And I think we […]

In conjunction with the September 30, 2008 broadcast of Critical Condition, POV has partnered with NewsHour to learn more about health care in America, and what presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are proposing for medical coverage. Susan Dentzer, the editor of Health Affairs journal and the host of NewsHour‘s Rx for Change, answered […]

Michael Moore scored a big buzz with the online release of his latest doc Slacker Uprising, a kind of concert film of his 2004 efforts to get out the (young Democratic) vote in advance of the election. The release, timed for the ’08 contest, functions as a cautionary tale to “not get fooled again” — […]

According to a recent poll conducted by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Americans say that health care is one of the most important issues in the 2008 presidential election. Roger Weisberg’s film Critical Condition paints a disturbing and gripping portrait of what happens when you’re sick and uninsured in America. As health care becomes […]

Filmmaker Kazuhiro Soda was born and raised in Japan. While attending the University of Tokyo, he met and befriended Yamauchi Kazuhiko, or “Yama-san.” Almost twenty years later, Kazuhiro was surprised to find out that his old friend was running for a critical city council seat in the city of Kawasaki as part of the Liberal […]

Katy Chevigny is the director of Election Day. After the film aired on POV, viewers wrote in with questions for Katy on the POV Blog. Read on as she answers questions about Nader and Gore in 2000, Ohio in 2004 and more. Mit asks: In the 2000 election, a lot of people blamed Nader for […]

Election Day shows us that many stories about the American voting process and the need for election reform slip beneath the radar of mainstream news coverage. Now that we’re just a few short months away from Election Day 2008, we want to take a close look at how these issues are being covered today. For […]

Election Day combines eleven stories — shot simultaneously on November 2, 2004, from dawn until long past midnight — into one film that documents the street-level experience of voters in today’s America. Along the way, filmmaker Katy Chevigny discovers that more and more Americans are bringing their passion for democracy to the poll. But Election […]

Why are voting laws so different from state to state? What’s a poll watcher, and how can you become one? Derek Cressman of Common Cause, a voting watchdog organization, answered some frequently asked questions about the U.S. election system on the POV companion website for Election Day, a film that chronicles the 2004 presidential election […]

To make Election Day, filmmaker Katy Chevigny fielded 14 crews to capture the action on November 2, 2004, all over the country. Election Day is as fast-paced and suspenseful as a thriller, with vote counts and political activism substituting for shootouts and car chases. The heroes of the day are ordinary Americans determined to vote, […]

This spring, WGBH Lab and POV have partnered to fund 10 independent producers, helping each of them realize ideas for a three-minute short documentary about a 2008 election story. We evaluated almost 100 pitches that reflect a wide range of filmmakers’ experiences with the coming election. Everyone at the Lab and POV was impressed with […]

Irene Villaseñor is POV’s Youth Views manager. Youth Views is a project that works with youth, educators, and youth-serving organizations to use POV films as a tool for youth engagement. Irene writes in today to talk about how communities can organize around the 2008 POV film Election Day to reduce voter disenfranchisement, and her own […]