Season 5

E1. Worst Possible Illusion: The Curiosity Cabinet of Vik Muniz

Oct 14, 2003 · 60m

This film takes a look at the work of Brazilian-born contemporary conceptual artist and rising star Vik Muniz -- sculptor, photographer and self-proclaimed magician. Muniz, best known for his book "Seeing Is Believing," which made both the New York Times and the Village Voice top 10 lists of photography books in 1999, uses his knowledge and interest of the history of photography to demonstrate how viewers can be easily deceived by the images around them.

E2. Foto-Novelas 2: `Junkyard Saints' and `Broken Sky'

Oct 21, 2003 · 60m

A spiritual thriller set in an automotive graveyard and a story based on a real-life plane crash.

E3. Shaolin Ulysses: Kungfu Monks in America

Oct 28, 2003 · 60m

The famous fighting monks of the Shaolin Monastery have seen a resurgence throughout the world, aided in part by the popularity of kung-fu movies among the hip-hop set and films like "The Matrix" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." The film follows a handful of Shaolin monks who have brought the style to America, chronicling their adventures in New York City, Houston and Las Vegas.

E4. A Wedding in Ramallah

Nov 4, 2003 · 60m

This program puts a human face on the Middle East conflict by chronicling the story of Bassam, a Palestinian American telephone repairman from Cleveland who returns home for an arranged marriage with a "home-made bride." On the West Bank, everyday domestic duties and squabbles are carried out against a backdrop of shelling and violence. Once in America, however, his bride discovers that life in exile is not necessarily an easier alternative.

E5. Be Good, Smile Pretty

Nov 11, 2003 · 60m

This personal documentary chronicles the filmmaker's struggle to know and grieve for the father she never knew, a soldier who died in Vietnam when she was a baby. Through her journey of discovery, and those of her family and her father's friends, the film sheds light on the more than 20,000 Americans whose fathers were killed in Vietnam -- and on those who continue to lose parents in war.

E6. Livermore

Nov 25, 2003 · 60m

Part history, part mystery, part comedy, this program is an offbeat look at one eccentric California town. A memorable cast of local armchair historians describe some of Livermore's legends -- a supernatural light bulb, a cursed totem pole, a scandalous book of photographs and the ominous nuclear lab.

E7. Eroica!

Dec 9, 2003 · 60m

A unique classical music ensemble of three young women take the musical world by storm, collaborating with a struggling composer to debut one of the first triple concertos written since Beethoven's.

E8. Loaded Gun: Life and Death and Dickinson

Dec 16, 2003 · 60m

Recruiting a stand-up comic, a rock band, feuding academics and Hollywood actresses to his cause, an irreverent filmmaker searches for the secret something that gave Emily Dickinson her poetic power.

E9. Get the Fire! Young Mormon Missionaries Abroad

Dec 23, 2003 · 60m

Get the Fire: Young Mormon Missionaries Abroad is a United States PBS-sponsored documentary, by the independent filmmaker Nancy du Plessis. It examines the experiences of some Mormon missionaries who questioned their religious beliefs after serving their missions. It premiered in December 2003 and was 60 minutes long. Some Mormon missionaries, including those serving missions in a foreign culture, may begin to question their religious upbringing and belief system. Get the Fire follows three LDS missionaries during their two-year missions in Germany. The documentary opens with the three future missionaries at their respective homes prior to knowing where they will serve. Surrounded by their family, each boy opens a mission call informing them they will serve in the Munich, Germany mission. The documentary follows them along the full two years of their mission from the Missionary Training Center until they leave the mission and return home. The film shows missionaries proselyting in public squares, knocking door to door, struggling with a foreign language, congregating in zone and district meetings, and meeting with the mission president. Topics covered include missionary slang, leaving a girlfriend at home, missionary morale, and relationships with family at home. The three missionaries appear to remain dedicated and faithful to their mission in the film.

E10. Man Bites Shorts

Dec 30, 2003 · 60m

Short film block: "Title": Directed by "Compulsory Breathing": David Munro "Don't Nobody Love the Game More Than Me": Martha Pinson "Sergi": Paul Sullivan "Dilly Dally": Mark Pellington "Tom Hits His Head": Tom Putnam "Bike Ride": Tom Schroeder

E11. Make 'Em Dance: The Hackberry Ramblers' Story

Jan 13, 2004 · 60m

For nearly 70 years, the Hackberry Ramblers have played an infectious, toe-tapping blend of Cajun music and Western swing. MAKE 'EM DANCE tells the story of the remarkable multigenerational band that has been in continuous existence since 1933. Part biography, part road movie, the documentary captures the poignant and funny exploits of these "agin' ragin' Cajuns," from a bayou crab boil to MTV to their first appearance at the Grand Ole Opry.

E12. Life Matters

Jan 20, 2004 · 60m

A straight-arrow rural Texan Pentecostal/Baptist minister, Curtis Boyd relinquished the pulpit in the heat of the social changes of the 1960s and became a doctor who provided thousands of safe, illegal abortions prior to Roe v. Wade. Together with a group of east Texas clergy, Dr. Boyd was and remains dedicated to the ideal that all women have the right to a safe abortion.

E13. Why Can't We Be a Family Again?; Downpour Resurfacing

Jan 27, 2004 · 60m

Raised by their grandmother, young Raymond and Danny continue to hold out hope for their mother's recovery from drug addiction -- even after she's given up hope herself. WHY CAN'T WE BE A FAMILY AGAIN is an Academy Award-nominated cinema verite portrait exploring the strength and love that bring together two brothers who long to be reunited with their mother. Blending experimental images with an intimate interview with poet and therapist Robert Hall, DOWNPOUR RESURFACING chronicles how one man transformed a childhood of abuse into a life of confidence and strength. Reaching for the language of dreams, the program enlists dancers, musicians, archival footage and a woman performing a tea ritual to illustrate the healing of Hall's story.

E14. Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property

Feb 10, 2004 · 60m

A "troublesome property" for his master, Nat Turner has remained a " troublesome property" for the historians, novelists, dramatists and others who have struggled to understand the leader of the famous 1831 slave rebellion. Using an innovative approach that combines documentary techniques, dramatic filmmaking and historical methodology, this program explores how the many meanings of Nat Turner remain critical to understanding the racial history of our country.

E15. A Place of Our Oen

May 27, 2004 · 60m

"Black Resort Communities and the African American Dream" Stanley Nelson is a third-generation, upper middle-class African American who spent the past 40 summers in Oak Bluffs, an affluent African-American resort community on Martha's Vineyard. Building on personal stories of summers past, this film explores the tightly-knit world of black professionals who created a refuge to call their own.

E16. Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew

Feb 24, 2004 · 60m

Jimmy Scott: If You Only Knew is a film portrait of the now famous jazz vocalist who was "rediscovered" decades after he disappeared from the public eye. The documentary blends concert footage, rare photos and candid interviews with Jimmy Scott, his family and his colleagues.

E17. Sentencing the Victim

Mar 2, 2004 · 60m

After Joanna Katz, a South Carolina woman, was brutally tortured and gang-raped, she survived to face her assailants and transform herself into a victim's rights advocate. Called upon to testify at parole hearings year after year, Katz decided to collaborate with a seasoned filmmaker to tell her own story, challenging the parole system in order to heal herself -- and to give courage to other women who have suffered violent crimes.

E18. T-Shirt Travels

Mar 23, 2004 · 60m

As a worker with an international aid organization stationed in a remote village in Zambia, filmmaker Shantha Bloemen saw more and more unemployed Zambians selling used clothing from the U.S. in the marketplace. Tracing a winding t-shirt trail carved by global economics, T-SHIRT TRAVELS explores the World Bank's devastating role in directing Zambia's economic policies and the underlying reasons why so many Africans remain in poverty.

E19. Every Child Is Born a Poet: The Life and Work of Piri Thomas

Mar 30, 2004 · 60m

In his life and his work, acclaimed Afro-Cuban-Puerto Rican poet Piri Thomas has used creative expression as a means to confront and overcome poverty, racism, violence and isolation. Author of the acclaimed autobiographical novel Down These Mean Streets, Thomas, through poetry, stories and performances, chronicles his journey from Spanish Harlem to prison to life as an author, educator and activist.

E20. Love Inventory

Apr 13, 2004 · 60m

Israeli filmmaker David Fisher inspires his four siblings to begin an emotionally challenging search for their long-lost sister. In a creative documentary style, with revealing moments of grief and humor, Fisher dissects a tangled web of relationships to uncover the dark secrets of the past, secrets that his parents were afraid to unearth and that are representative of Israel's own birth pains.

E21. Ram Dass: Fierce Grace

Apr 20, 2004 · 60m

When Harvard expelled faculty members Richard Alpert and Timothy Leary in 1963 for LSD experimentation, Alpert traveled to India and returned transformed into the beloved guru Ram Dass. Now in his 70s, the author of the best-seller Be Here Now continues to inspire people all over the world as he deals with the effects of a massive stroke.

E22. The Weather Underground

Apr 27, 2004 · 60m

"Hello. I'm going to read a declaration of a state of war... Within the next 14 days we will attack a symbol or institution of American injustice." -- Bernardine Dohrn Thirty years ago, with these words, a group of young American radicals called The Weathermen announced their intention to overthrow the U.S. government. Fueled by outrage over the Vietnam War and racism in America, they went undergound during the 1970s, bombing targets across the country that they felt symbolized "the real violence" that the U.S. government and capitalist power were wreaking throughout the world.From pitched battles with police on Chicago's city streets, to bombing the U.S. Capitol building, to breaking acid-guru Timothy Leary out of prison, this carefully organized clandestine network attempted to incite a national revolution, while successfully evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history.One of the top documentaries of the year, this award-winning film interweaves extensive archival material with modern-day interviews to explore the incredible story of "The Weather Underground." As former members reflect candidly about the idealistic passion that drove them to "bring the war home," they paint a compelling portrait of troubled and revolutionary times, with unexpected and often striking connections to the current world situation.

E23. One Night at the Grand Star; Double Exposure

May 4, 2004 · 60m

In Los Angeles, there's only one place where you can celebrate the synchronicity of an old-school Chinatown establishment, classic jazz, DJ culture and the underground dance scene: the Grand Star. Find out how this restaurant became one of the city's liveliest and most intergenerational and culturally integrated neighborhood nightclubs. In DOUBLE EXPOSURE an artist and self-proclaimed "old Chinese lady" sets out to explore her own identity and prove that it's never too late to take a risk by making her first film in her 60s. The result? An experimental program that expresses her roots in two countries through self-effacing humor, double-exposed images and an immigrant's long look back at her native China.

E24. Refugee

May 11, 2004 · 60m

Three young Cambodian American men, raised on the streets of San Francisco's tough Tenderloin district, travel to Cambodia wielding video cameras to capture their experiences of meeting fathers, sisters and brothers for the first time. These family reunions reveal the quagmire of Cambodian political upheaval and military invasion, as well as the heavy toll of years spent apart in different worlds.

E25. Death of a Shaman

May 27, 2004 · 60m

Fine.: When factory worker Ed is confronted by a co-worker's pressing question over lunch, he begins to question his own decisions and his current life as a husband, father and suburbanite. Doki-Doki: In suburban Tokyo, Yumi finds herself waiting every day with the same group of strangers for the same seats on the same train. Who are these fellow commuters? Where do they live? What are they like? One day, she decides to find out.

E26. Cosmopolitan

Jun 1, 2004 · 60m

When his wife and daughter abandon him, East Indian immigrant Gopal (Roshan Seth) reinvents himself as an all-American bachelor. With women's magazines as his guide, he pursues Mrs. Shaw (Carol Kane), the divorcee next door. But he finds there's more to love than the pages of Cosmo would suggest.

E27. Sumo East and West

Jun 8, 2004 · 60m

In recent years, the ancient art of sumo has witnessed the rise of an increasing number of foreigners to the top of its professional ranks. From Hawaii to Atlantic City, the experiences of American wrestlers provide an entertaining glimpse at the past, present and future of sumo, revealing how this former bastion of Japanese tradition is grappling with globalizing Western forces.

E28. The Amasong Chorus: Singing Out

Jun 15, 2004 · 60m

When lesbian music student Kristina Boerger moved to a small Illinois college town, she didn't find a ready-made community. So she created one with what she loved best: choral singing. Assembling a ragtag group of volunteers, she created a lesbian choir in the middle of this conservative area. Showing the choir's evolution into a nationally accepted and recognized award-winning ensemble, THE AMASONG CHORUS documents how the spirit and dedication of one person can help transform a community.