Season 4

E1. Maggie Growls

Feb 4, 2003 · 60m

Maggie Kuhn (1905-1995) founded the Gray Panthers after being forced to retire at the age of 65, in what Ralph Nader describes as "the most significant retirement in history." It galvanized Maggie's campaign against mandatory retirement and ageism. Her outrage fueled a political chain reaction that left society's treatment of older Americans forever changed.

E2. Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story

Feb 11, 2003 · 60m

“Off the Charts: The Song-Poem Story,” a wry exploration of the industry in which record producers set amateurs' poems to music and record them (for a fee, of course). Included are interviews with producers, performers, observers and people who have submitted their poems for musical adaptation. And there's a sampling of the results (examples include “Non-Violent Tae-kwon-do Trooper” and “I Am a Ginseng Digger”). Most songs are “in one ear and out the other,” says musician Ellery Eskelin (the son of a song-poem “auteur”). But, he adds, “There's the 10 or 20 percent that are from another planet.”

E3. On This Island

Feb 18, 2003 · 60m

On an isolated Maine island of 350 people, a clash over arts education spins out of control into vandalism and death threats, tearing apart friends and neighbors. Sigourney Weaver narrates this program following a former Broadway producer as he creates a musical to help the community heal its wounds through songs about lobstering, loneliness and the beauty of the sea.

E4. Downside Up

Feb 25, 2003 · 60m

Since the 1980s, the rural working class town of North Adams, Massachusetts, has struggled to kick-start its economy following the mill closings. This program explores how, with the 1999 opening of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the town has united its blue collar base with visionaries from the art world to reinvent itself in the post-industrial economy.

E5. Los Trabajadores/The Workers

Mar 25, 2003 · 60m

It's 1999, and the booming city of Austin, Texas keeps on growing - thanks largely to men like Ramón and Juan, who work some of the hardest jobs in an America that doesn't want them. Through the lives of these two men and a battle over Austin's controversial day labor program, LOS TRABAJADORES brings to life the vivid contradictions that haunt America's dependence on and discrimination against immigrant labor.

E6. Chiefs

Apr 1, 2003 · 60m

An observational documentary about the on- and off-court struggles of Native American basketball players at Wyoming Indian High School.

E7. Strange Fruit

Apr 8, 2003 · 60m

Radio stations banned it, but when Billie Holiday sang "Strange Fruit" the whole world listened anyway. Sprung from the pen of an unknown Bronx schoolteacher named Abel Meeropol, the song continues to mesmerize musicians and civil rights advocates alike with its chilling vision of a lynching. This program shows how a little-known Jewish songwriter and an African- American icon created a song that changed America.

E8. Bird by Bird with Annie: A Portrait of Anne Lamott

Apr 22, 2003 · 60m

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Lee Mock ("Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision") comes this engaging portrait of the best-selling author and laugh out loud humorist Anne Lamott ("Bird by Bird," "Operating Instructions," "Crooked Little Heart," "Traveling Mercies," "Blue Shoe"). The moving story of a survivor and an iconoclast, the film follows Annie through a year of writing, teaching and mothering. Lamott, a recovering alcoholic and single mother who is both a born-again Christian and liberal activist, shares her unique insights on such universal concerns as loss, alienation, bad hair days, loneliness, creativity, motherhood, unfirm thighs, faith and the meaning of life.

E9. Sisters in Resistance

Apr 29, 2003 · 60m

During the Nazi occupation of France, four very young women -- who were neither Jews nor Communists, nor in any danger of arrest --chose to risk their lives as resistance fighters. Brought together in Ravensbruck concentration camp, they helped one another survive. Airing in conjunction with Holocaust Remembrance Day, this program shares the story of four heroines whose intense friendship, riveting memories and social activism lasted long after the war was won.

E10. Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka'ehukai

May 6, 2003 · 60m

Heart of the Sea is an hour-long documentary about Hawaiian legend Rell “Kapolioka'ehukai” Sunn who died in January 1998 of breast cancer at the age of 47. Known worldwide as a pioneer of women’s professional surfing, in the Islands Rell Sunn achieved the stature of an icon — not only for her physical power, grace and luminous beauty, but for her leadership in a community that loved her as much as she loved it. Named one of Hawai’i’s most influential women of the 20th century by ABC television, Sunn - whose Hawaiian name means Heart of the Sea - was eulogized in the New York Times for having “captured the heart of Hawai’i during a 14-year battle with cancer.”

E11. Guns and Mothers

May 13, 2003 · 60m

Maria, mother of four, is a spokeswoman for Second Amendment Sisters and a firm believer in the right to bear arms. Frances is an advocate of gun control who lost three sons to urban bullets. Together, they eloquently expand the contentious debate over gun control to include women who fall on both sides of a historically male-dominated issue.

E12. Razing Appalachia

May 20, 2003 · 60m

In the face of thunderous blasting and choking dust caused by mountaintop mining, the last 40 families of Blair, WV, stay to fight America's second-largest coal company as it threatens their homes. RAZING APPALACHIA is the story of a remarkable grassroots effort to redefine the role of government and power of corporations over our daily lives.

E13. Hansel Mieth: Vagabond Photographer

May 27, 2003 · 60m

Hansel Mieth: Vagabond Photographer is the compelling tale of a pioneering woman photojournalist who created some of the most indelible images of America mid-20th century. A German immigrant who arrived in this country in the midst of the Great Depression, she rose to become a celebrated LIFE magazine staff photographer. Armed with convictions, perseverance, and talent, Mieth courageously carved out a career in the male-dominated world of photojournalism at a time when very few women were accepted in the profession.

E14. Daddy & Papa

Jun 3, 2003 · 60m

Daddy & Papa is a one-hour documentary film made by producer/director Johnny Symons in 2002, it explores same-sex parenting as seen in the lives of four families headed by male couples. The film also examines the legal, social, and political challenges faced by gay parents and their children.