Season 4
17 episodes · Jun 18, 1991
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S4E1Absolutely Positive
Jun 18, 199160mPeter Adair asks 11 people — women and men, gay and straight, from all walks of life — to share their stories about having HIV. Alternately irreverent, candid and soulful, this stirring film is not about being sick; it is about being true to the emotional complexity of being mortal.
S4E2Marc and Ann
Jun 25, 199127mMarc Savoy knows only one way to talk about Cajun music -- with the same passion and conviction as the music itself. Legendary filmmaker Les Blank delves directly into the heart of Cajun country to portray a couple devoted to the preservation of Louisiana French culture in both their personal and public lives. The joy of Cajun music, its signature yelps and wails, filter through many of the kitchens, porches, and dance halls of the Savoys' Eunice, LA, community.
S4E3Plena Is Work, Plena Is Song
Jun 25, 199160mPlena is in Puerto Rico what the blues are in the U.S.: a musical expression abounding with romance, daily news, and personal sagas. As the Puerto Rican community grows on the mainland, the infectious rhythms of Puerto Rico's most original contribution to Caribbean urban music are celebrated with gusto.
S4E4Twinsburg, OH: Some Kind of Weird Twin Thing
Jun 25, 199160mEvery year 2,500 sets of twins gather in Twinsburg, Ohio for Twins Days. Most are dressed alike, many live together, and all seem to have rhyming names. Standing out amidst the lighthearted contests and games are filmmaker Sue Marcoux and her sister Michele, separated by 3,000 miles and a lifetime of anti-twin behavior.
S4E5Honorable Nations
Jul 2, 199160mFor 99 years, the residents of Salamanca, N.Y. have rented the land under their homes for an average of $1/year from the Seneca Indians, under the terms of a lease imposed by Congress. Now, as the lease is about to expire, a century of bad business must be renegotiated. The survival of an American town and justice for the Senecas appear to be in conflict.
S4E6Chemical Valley
Jul 9, 199160mA series of accidents at a West Virginia chemical plant producing the same deadly toxins that caused the disaster in Bhopal, India, has alarmed area residents. But the area's fragile economy depends on the jobs provided by the plant, dividing the community.
S4E7Sea of Oil
Jul 9, 199160mThe Exxon Valdez disaster left far more than a soiled coastline in its wake. Grief, suspicion, anger and greed oozed through the small, formerly pristine town of Valdez. The human toll of an environmental nightmare is evoked in a haunting film which Exxon and the City of Valdez attempted, unsuccessfully, to suppress.
S4E8Turn Here Sweet Corn
Jul 9, 199160mA search for meaning beyond cliches and nostalgia, as a family farm is lost to speculative suburban real estate developers. The camera moves through a Minnesota corn field and finds a photograph of a suburban tract clothes-pinned to a cornstalk. Layered with visual and emotional paradoxes, the film juxtaposes innovative video techniques with slices of a simpler, threatened life, in an emotional and personal reflection on the colonization of cornfields by shopping malls.
S4E9Tongues Untied
Jul 16, 199160mAngry, funny, erotic and poetic by turns (and sometimes all at once), this exploration of what it means to be black and gay jumps from interview to confession, music video to documentary to poem.
S4E10Berkeley in the Sixties
Jul 23, 199160mFrom the Free Speech Movement to the anti-war protests to the last stand over People's Park, Berkeley, California became synonymous with a generation's quest for social, political, and cultural transformation.
S4E11A Little Vicious
Jul 30, 199160mA pit bull, his elderly master, and a dog trainer/philosopher form a curious love triangle. Elegantly crafted, wryly narrated by Kevin Bacon, and infused with a blend of humor and pathos, Immy Humes' dog-umentary is a quirky, off-beat gem of a film.
S4E12The Big Bang
Aug 6, 199160mWhether the subject is sex, death, madness or God, The Big Bang never lets up in its weird and wonderful search for the meaning of it all.
S4E13Maria's Story
Aug 13, 199160mMaria Serrano, El Salvadoran wife, mother, and guerrilla leader, helps plan a major nationwide offensive that led to the historic peace pact of 1992. Skirting bullets and mortar attacks, recounting a childhood of poverty and abuse by government troops, suffering the tragic loss of her daughter to enemy fire, and spending precious moments with her husband and surviving daughters, Maria brings viewers to the heart of the fight for a more just society.
S4E14Homes Apart
Aug 20, 199160mTen million families were separated between North and South Korea when the Korean War ended in 1953. Beginning with the story of one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, the film reveals the personal, social, and political dimensions of the last divided nation on earth.
S4E15Where the Heart Roams
Jul 30, 199160mRomance novels comprise nearly half the paperback books sold in America. Chiffon-shrouded, jewel-laden, flower-bedecked Barbara Cartland has written hundreds of them. And filmmaker George Csicsery has given his heart to this fascinating subculture where all the women are beautiful, all the men are mysterious, and all the endings are happy.
S4E16Casting the First Stone
Sep 3, 199160mAbortion has been at the center of one of the most dramatic and wrenching debates of our times, but the social forces and the changing lives behind the rhetoric are rarely explored. This film draws complex portraits of individuals on both sides of the controversy in a small town in Pennsylvania, where very different life experiences have shaped conflicting values and beliefs.