"We have no idea how valuable those places will be in a couple of generations. Right now, it takes a lot of foresight. Empty pockets and a bank deficit are not very good for foresight. It's the same as every problem we face -- it's short-term gain as opposed to the long-term benefits."

Starting Friday, November 1, 2013, you can stream Marking the Distance, one of six the StoryCorps Shorts that make up our upcoming broadcast Listening Is an Act of Love: A StoryCorps Special.

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We’re smack in the middle of POV’s 23rd season — and it’s been a great one so far. Encore presentations The Way We Get By and First Person Plural will be shown on select PBS stations in the next two weeks (check your local listings here). On August 17, we’ll be back with a brand […]

I don’t know about you, but I am so tired of end-of-the-year/decade lists… yet, umm, here I am posting one. To be fair, we haven’t posted that many lists in the past few weeks on the POV Blog, and this isn’t really a “list” per se, but rather a quick note about the five blog […]

Beyond Hatred, which aired on June 30, is streaming online in its entirety until midnight tonight! Don’t miss this amazing film, which follows a family in France as they struggle to deal with the aftermath of their son’s murder by three skinheads. With remarkable dignity, the Chenu family fights to transcend hatred and the inevitable […]

If you missed the first two POV films of this season, Jennifer Maytorena Taylor‘s New Muslim Cool and Olivier Meyrou‘s Beyond Hatred, we have some good news: both films are available online! New Muslim Cool will be streaming until July 24, 2009. Beyond Hatred will be streaming until July 16, 2009. Check back throughout the […]

Freelance writer Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive, blogs about documentaries and the Web in her weekly column, Outside the Frame. After reading my previous column, someone asked me why OnBeing, the washingtpost.com interactive project, meets my criteria for being more than “video plopped on a webpage.” It’s a fair question: after all, […]

Freelance writer Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive, blogs about documentaries and the Web in her weekly column, Outside the Frame. Amanda is attending South by Southwest this week. In Monday’s Austin American Statesman, columnist Michael Barnes asks if SXSW’s Interactive and Film tracks ought to be combined next year. Interestingly, Barnes’ argument […]

Freelance writer Amanda Hirsch, former editorial director of PBS Interactive, blogs about documentaries and the Web in her weekly column, Outside the Frame. Amanda is attending South by Southwest this week. It’s cold here in Austin — unseasonably cold. They’ve got heat lamps at the outdoor parties and people are carrying coats and scarves with […]

Last October, I railed about how there was a dearth of doc filmmakers tackling the current economic meltdown, pointing out that the usually on-the-ball PBS Frontline series wasn’t stepping into the void. Well, they finally answered the call a couple of weeks ago. And boy, did they present a grim picture. I found Frontline’s “Inside […]

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. I should say right off the bat that I don’t have kids. So what am I doing at Momversation, a video blog about the experiences of motherhood? Well, I’m […]

If you missed the premier of two great P.O.V films this week, you have a chance to watch the full films online! In the Family is streaming online until October 31, 2008 while Critical Condition is streaming until November 11, 2008. Both films document intensely personal journeys and stories, and both are engaged with the […]

Writing about documentaries ain’t what it used to be. Not that I would know — I’m just talking with my tongue in my cheek about the supposedly sepia-tinted times before docs were (relatively) big business. I recently wrote a piece for Spin magazine about the great doc, Anvil! The Story of Anvil, which is getting […]

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” — […]

Did you know that select POV films are available in their entirety online? If you didn’t get a chance to catch Calavera Highway this past week, you can watch the full film on our website. But hurry! The film stops streaming on Tuesday, September 23rd. Calavera Highway follows Armando and Carlos Peña, two brothers who […]

We’re happy to announce that the winner of the POV Film Your Issue award is Brandan Odums‘s New Orleans for Sale, a film that decries suffering as a tourist draw in post-Katrina New Orleans. Watch the video: Odums is a 22-year old New Orleans college student who is part of a young filmmaking collective called […]

Calling all crossword puzzlers and Scrabble fans! You know who are — you can’t get enough word play. You do crossword puzzles on the train, play games of Scrabble in cafes or in the park, or on Scrabulous. Maybe you’ve read Marc Romano‘s Crossworld or Stephen Fatzis‘ Word Freaks, recent books on the worlds of […]