US Input

Historian’s Take: What is Blaccent and Why do people keep using it

There’s a pattern of white and non-Black performers using "Black English" or "Blaccent" to gain notoriety. These performers are being called out (and canceled) for cultural appropriation, yet Blaccent is becoming more popular, with some people proclaiming Blaccent to be the modern internet-speak. What is the problem with using a Blaccent? And what does history tell us about its origins? (PBS Digital Studios)

Nashville Bachelorettes: A Ben Otto Investigation

NASHVILLE BACHELORETTES: A BEN ODDO INVESTIGATION is a comedic short about one journalist’s quest to figure out whether bachelorettes are the worst thing to happen to the city or the best. Part 60 Minutes, part Daily Show, it features interviews with local and national thought leaders before turning to the bachelorettes themselves. What Ben discovers…will leave you feeling mildly amused. (Nashville Public Television)

Brother

Both intensely personal and increasingly universal, Brother explores the individual toll and psychological origins of a descent into opioid use disorder and the tenacity necessary to break free and survive it. While the rehabilitation system doesn’t always make the distinction, there is a difference between surviving and thriving. Will her brother be given the tools for either? Together, the siblings address the human, familial, and personal toll of opioid addiction, while dispelling some of the most damaging tropes of addiction narratives and the disease of opioid use disorder. (ITVS)

Hazing

Hazing is a widespread, far-reaching practice fueled by tradition, secrecy, groupthink, power, and the desire to belong in fraternities and sororities on college campuses and throughout institutions across the U.S. Through the voices of hazing survivors, family members, perpetrators, and scholars, Hazing reveals a variety of underground rituals that are abusive, and sometimes deadly. Reckoning with his own traumatic experiences as both a hazing survivor and perpetrator, filmmaker Byron Hurt embarks on a deeply personal journey beyond his fraternity, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., to understand the intersecting roles that power, gender, race, dominance, and control play in the violent lengths college students and others will go to fit in (ITVS)

On The Divide

On The Divide follows the story of three Latinx people living in McAllen, Texas who, despite their views, are connected by the most unexpected of places: the last reproductive health clinic on the U.S./Mexico border. As threats to the clinic and their personal safety mount, these three are forced to make decisions they never could have imagined. A Fishbowl Films production in association with Giving Voice Films, Willa Productions and Latino Public Broadcasting, and is a co-production of POV. Official Selection, Tribeca Film Festival. (AmDoc Development)

To Wade or Row

When Jane and her boyfriend Henry stop at an unassuming motel during their road trip, it turns out to be a much more important destination for her than he knows. She sneaks out early in the morning to speak with Norma at the front desk, their conversation about local lakeside activities leading to the coded question Jane has been waiting for: would she like to wade? Or row? Jane is seen by the doctor in the motel’s covert clinic, but while they perform her illegal abortion Henry wakes up to find Jane missing, and a police officer’s unexpected arrival threatens to expose those whole underground operation. (WMHT)

Chilly & Milly

Chilly, William’s father, is a diabetic with kidney failure, whose illness detrimentally affects his and his family’s lives. Milly sees her sole purpose in life as to taking care of her loved ones. While watching the documentary, Chilly and Milly discuss their life together, and their successes and setbacks in life. When Chilly passes away during the pandemic, Milly comes to terms with her loss. (AmDoc Development)

Bring Her Home

Bring Her Home follows three Indigenous women — an artist, an activist, and a politician — as they work to vindicate and honor their relatives who are victims in the growing epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. As they face the lasting effects of historical trauma, each woman searches for healing while navigating the oppressive systems that brought about this very crisis. (Twin Cities PBS)

Tutwiler

Tutwiler, a documentary short from FRONTLINE, The Marshall Project and co-presented with America ReFramed, offers a powerful and unforgettable window into the lives of incarcerated pregnant women — and what happens to their newborns. (America ReFramed)

The Great World of Gregory Blackstock

"Outsider artists" are those who live outside the "norm," but Gregory Blackstock's story is as much about an artist who is self-taught as it is about an artist who creates art to please himself. Through rich animation, this film showcases Gregory’s inner life and intricately detailed “list” drawings and shows how he uses his artwork to catalog and make sense of the world around him. Gregory’s cousin Dorothy Frisch ultimately helps bring his drawings to the attention of the art world, while the documentary brings his drawings to life through hand-crafted animation, bringing you deeper into the unique vision of this singular artist.  (Independent Lens)

One Child Nation

China’s one-child policy, the extreme population control measure that made it illegal for couples to have more than one child, may have ended in 2015, but the process of dealing with the trauma of its brutal enforcement is only just beginning. From award-winning documentarian Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, One Child Nation explores the ripple effects of this devastating social experiment, uncovering one shocking human rights violation after another — from abandoned newborns (almost always girls), to forced sterilizations and abortions to government abductions. (Independent Lens)

Senior Prom

Senior Prom celebrates our eldest LGBTQ+ generation who spent a lifetime fighting for the right to love openly and, via rich personal archives, retraces lives and legacies of resistance that helped change the course of civil rights. (Independent Lens)

Vision Portraits

Acclaimed director Rodney Evans (Brother to Brother and The Happy Sad) takes viewers on a personal journey as he ponders how the deterioration of his vision will impact his life and work as a filmmaker. Interviewing blind and low vision artists — a photographer, a dancer and a writer— Evans embarks on a quest to learn how other artists have continued to create art and how their journeys might serve as inspiration for his own. (America ReFramed)