About this season
Since its 1988 premiere, this critically acclaimed documentary series has presented hundreds of films that put a human face on contemporary social issues by relating a compelling story in an intimate fashion. "POV" has won virtually every major film and broadcasting award available, including 38 Emmys, 22 Peabody Awards and three Oscars.
Episodes (14)
1. My Reincarnation
Aired 21 June 2012 • 60 min
High Tibetan Buddhist Master Chögyal Namkhal Norbu teaches in the West, while his son, Yeshi, breaks from tradition and embraces the modern world.
2. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator
Aired 28 June 2012 • 60 min
In a stunning milestone for justice in Central America, a Guatemalan court recently charged former dictator Efraín Rios Montt with genocide for his brutal war in the 1980s — and Pamela Yates’ 1983 documentary, When the Mountains Tremble, provided key evidence for bringing the indictment. Granito: How to Nail a Dictator tells the extraordinary story of how a film helped tip the scales of justice.
3. The City Dark
Aired 5 July 2012 • 60 min
Is darkness becoming extinct? A meditation on the human relationship to the stars.
4. Guilty Pleasures
Aired 12 July 2012 • 60 min
Every four seconds a romance novel published by Harlequin or its British counterpart, Mills & Boon, is sold somewhere in the world. Julie Moggan’s 'Guilty Pleasures' takes an amusing and touching look at this global phenomenon. Ironies abound in the contrasts between the everyday lives of the books’ readers and the fantasy worlds that offer them escape.
5. The Light in Her Eyes
Aired 19 July 2012 • 60 min
Houda al-Habash, a conservative Muslim preacher, founded a Qur’an school for girls in Damascus, Syria, 30 years ago. Every summer, her students immerse themselves in a rigorous study of Islam. A surprising cultural shift is underway - women are claiming space within the mosque. Shot right before the uprising in Syria erupted, 'The Light in Her Eyes' offers an extraordinary portrait of a leader.
6. Up Heartbreak Hill
Aired 26 July 2012 • 60 min
Up Heartbreak Hill chronicles the lives of three high school seniors living on the Navajo Nation and struggling to shape their identities as both Native American and modern American. They must decide whether to stay in their community - a place inextricably woven into the fiber of their beings - or leave in pursuit of educational and economic opportunities.
7. POV Short Cuts
Aired 9 August 2012 • 60 min
Five shorts, including "The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement," about an octogenarian Alabama barber and WWII veteran who carried the American flag across the bridge on the first Selma to Montgomery march of 1965; and "Sin País (Without Country)," about illegal immigrants from Guatemala who, 20 years after arriving in the U.S., are deported to their home country. Also: three StoryCorps animations, including "Eyes on the Stars," about astronaut Ronald McNair.
8. I'm Carolyn Parker: The Good, the Mad, and the Beautiful
Aired 20 September 2012 • 60 min
Jonathan Demme’s portrait of post-Katrina New Orleans tells the story of Carolyn Parker, a lifelong resident of the Lower Ninth Ward, who is fighting for the right to rebuild her home and community.
9. El Velador (The Night Watchman)
Aired 27 September 2012 • 60 min
From dusk to dawn, 'El Velador' accompanies Martin, a guard who watches over the extravagant mausoleums of some of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords. In the labyrinth of the cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us that, amid the turmoil of a drug war that has claimed more than 50,000 lives, ordinary existence persists in Mexico and quietly defies the dead.
10. Give Up Tomorrow
Aired 4 October 2012 • 60 min
Exposing shocking corruption within the judicial system of the Philippines in one of the most sensational trials in the country’s history. Two grieving mothers, entangled in a case that ends a nation’s use of capital punishment but fails to free an innocent man, dedicate more than a decade to executing or saving him.
11. Sun Kissed
Aired 18 October 2012 • 60 min
When a Navajo couple uncovers a hidden link between their children’s rare genetic disorder and the American government’s conquest of their tribe, their lives are changed forever.
12. Nostalgia for the Light
Aired 25 October 2012 • 60 min
Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for the Light is a remarkable meditation on memory, history and eternity. Chile’s remote Atacama Desert, 10,000 feet above sea level, provides stunningly clear views of the heavens for astronomers. But it also holds secrets from the past: human remains, from pre-Columbian mummies to the bones of political prisoners "disappeared" during the Pinochet dictatorship.
13. Reportero
Aired 7 January 2013 • 60 min
A veteran reporter and his colleagues at an independent newsweekly defy powerful drug cartels and corrupt officials to continue publishing the news in Mexico.
14. Girl Model
Aired 24 March 2013 • 60 min
A lyrical exploration of youth, beauty and ambition, seen through the eyes of a conflicted American scout and a 13-year-old she discovers.