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11 Episodes 2001 - 2001
Episode 1
Tue, Jun 19, 2001 60 mins
The series presents "Scout's Honor," an affecting chronicle of a straight Boy Scout's battle to change the youth organization's stand against admitting gays. He's Steven Cozza of Petaluma, Cal., who was just 12 when he founded a grassroots organization called Scouting for All. The hour offers background on the issue, but mostly it follows Steven, at home and around the country. His overriding theme: "Gay people are normal. The only thing that's not normal is the policy that discriminates against them."
Episode 2
Tue, Jun 26, 2001 60 mins
The sweetest sound in the world is one's own name, says filmmaker Alan Berliner, who ruminates on names in general and his own in particular in this engagingly offbeat hour. Berliner explores his name with help from his parents and sister, and asks people on New York City streets their opinions of the name "Alan." He also interviews an INS official, an Ellis Island librarian and members of the Jim Smith Society (it has just one entrance requirement). And he invites every Alan Berliner he can find to dinner (12 show up).
Episode 3
Tue, Jul 3, 2001 60 mins
An immigrant family straddles two cultures in "My American Girls: A Dominican Story," a probing but warm cinéma-vérité portrait of the Ortizes of Brooklyn. Sandra and Bautista Ortiz work two menial jobs apiece and try to maintain some control over their happily chaotic household (relatives and friends are a constant presence) while building their retirement house in the Dominican Republic. It's their driving dream but it's tinged with sadness because they know that their daughters (the eldest a recent Columbia grad) are Americans, and for them the "D.R." will only be a place to visit.
Episode 4
Tue, Jul 10, 2001 60 mins
Chronicling the case of a Japanese-American who defied the WWII internment order and saw his conviction upheld by the Supreme Court in 1944. "Every branch of Government that is responsible for protecting the Constitution failed," says law professor Peter Irons. In 1983 Korematsu sought to reopen his case. "It represents the trial Japanese-Americans never had," says his lawyer, Donald Tamaki. This time the result was different.
Episode 5
Tue, Jul 17, 2001 60 mins
Chronicling the 1999 season of the fledgling Women's Professional Football League from the perspectives of two players, linebacker Jane Bolin and receiver Kertia "Moochie" Lofton, a single mother who also has ambitions to play pro basketball. As for Bolin, who worked as a political consultant and has a marketing background, she loves to play and will put up with the Twin Cities-based WPFL's shaky finances and sexually provocative promotional strategy to do so. "There will always be politics," she says, "but there might not always be the WPFL."
Episode 6
Tue, Jul 24, 2001 60 mins
Welfare reform comes across as a work very much in progress in "Take It from Me," which interweaves penetrating case studies of low-income New Yorkers. One woman, with a troubled teenage son, can't find work as a waitress despite her well-spoken manner. A recovering substance abuser with three children has a job but earns just $5.50 an hour. And a young mother of three can't regain custody of the two she lost without an apartment. "We have the thirst to make it to the top," says another. "But in the world as it is today, no one is on our side."
Episode 7
Tue, Aug 14, 2001 90 mins
Chronicling clashes over Western lands that Native Americans consider sacred. "It's two different belief systems in conflict," says a National Park Service ranger at Devils Tower, Wyo., a towering rock monolith (made famous in the film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind") that's holy ground to Lakota---and a favorite spot for rock climbers. In northern Arizona, mines encroach on the Hopis' "ring of shrines." And at Mount Shasta in California, plans for a ski resort---and followers of New Age religions---are upsetting the local Wintu tribe. Peter Coyote narrates.
Episode 8
Tue, Aug 21, 2001 90 mins
Examining the effect of economic globalization on Jamaica. It's anything but positive, according to filmmaker Stephanie Black, who juxtaposes scenes of American and British tourists at play with Jamaican farmers, workers, businessmen and politicians describing their difficulties (Black also juxtaposes often-contrasting comments by former Jamaican prime minister Michael Manley with those of International Monetary Fund deputy director Stanley Fischer). Two local industries are thriving, however: guard-dog suppliers and coffin-makers.
Episode 9
Tue, Aug 28, 2001 90 mins
"High School," cinéma-vérité master Frederick Wiseman's piercing 1968 look at the rhythms of life at Philadelphia's mostly white, mostly middle-class Northeast High School, captures both similarities and differences (not just hair styles) between then and now. The outside world intrudes, too, as a gym teacher catches up with a visiting former student, a Vietnam vet who's in uniform. "Didn't get hit, huh?" the teacher surmises. Then they swap stories of other former students who weren't so lucky.
Episode 10
Tue, Oct 2, 2001 120 mins
"5 Girls" from Chicago confront adolescence in this cinéma-vérité documentary, filmed over three years by director-producer Maria Finitzo. Aisha and Corrie have dad problems (both are loving, but Aisha's is overprotective and Corrie's disapproves of her bisexual lifestyle). Amber succeeds in school despite her family's dysfunction. Habinh, a Vietnamese native, is adapting to the U.S., and Toby is pushed to excel by her parents, both of whom are doctors.
Episode 11
Thu, Dec 13, 2001 90 mins
Profiling seven youngsters---three Arabs, four Jews---who live in and around Jerusalem. (The documentary was filmed between 1997 and 2000.) One boy wants to be Israel's "religious army commander" when he grows up. A girl's father, a journalist with ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is in an Israeli jail. And two have lost friends to Intifada violence. But one of the filmmakers, a U.S.-born, Israeli-raised Jew named B.Z. Goldberg (with experience in conflict resolution), tries to get the youngsters together. He succeeds, to a degree. In war, one Israeli notes, "both sides lose."