American Documentary

Overview

BOSTON, MA – August 30, 2022 – IDA Documentary Award-winner America ReFramed, announced today the acquisition of three new films premiering as part of its 11th fall season: No Time to Fail, Town Destroyer, and In Search of Bengali Harlem. These additions support America ReFramed’s eleventh season focus on filmmakers and artists using self expression to challenge the definition of culture in an ever-evolving America. America ReFramed, a series co-produced byWORLD and American Documentary, airs every Thursday at 8pmET/7C on WORLD.

“America ReFramed continues to bring important and diverse perspectives of American life to viewers. At a time when democracy feels especially tenuous, WORLD is proud to work together with American Documentary to present inspiring stories of empowered citizens, officials and artists from all walks of life,” said Chris Hastings, executive producer of WORLD at GBH in Boston. “Thanks to our partnerships with immensely talented documentary filmmakers from around the world, we are grateful to be able to make these stories accessible to all.”

“This latest slate of films continues to mark America ReFramed as an arbiter of taste in the independent documentary space," said Chris White, Executive Producer, POV and America ReFramed. "Each film brings a new voice to social issues and experiences impacting how Americans live in today's culture.”

The three new titles making their broadcast and streaming premiere include No Time to Fail, directed by Sara Archambault and Margo Guernsey, which captures local election administrators working around the clock to manage the preparation and conduct of the election process amidst an onslaught of attacks from a sitting President and the deadly threat of a global pandemic, premiering October 26, 2023; Bay Area directors Deborah Kaufman’s and Alan Snitow’s Town Destroyer focuses on a heated censorship dispute over historic murals at San Francisco's George Washington High School, which praise Washington and critically depict him overseeing his slaves and directing the bloody seizure of Native lands during the Revolutionary Wars, premiering November 2, 2023; and In Search of Bengali Harlem, directed by Aladdin Ullah and Vivek Bald, which follows Ullah from the streets of Harlem to the villages of Bangladesh to uncover his parents’ past and relate the specific history of Bengali Muslim immigrants who arrived in mid-20th century Harlem, debuting December 21, 2023.

Previously announced premiere titles airing this fall include Running with My Girls, directed by Rebekah Henderson, that follows five female activists as they take on the entrenched political establishment in Denver, Colorado, when they decide to run for office as part of a grassroots movement to take back their city, premiering September 14, 2023; and the first animated experimental film to appear on America ReFramed, By Water, directed by Iyabo Kwayana and produced by BlackStar Projects’ founder and Chief Executive & Artistic Officer and former American Documentary board member, Maori Karmael Holmes. The short film follows an unlikely hero's journey into his own memories and becomes a vehicle for reconciliation and healing for himself and his sibling. By Water will premiere on December 14, 2023.

In solidarity with cultural activities taking place throughout fall and winter 2023, America ReFramed will delve into its catalog to host encore presentations of notable films supporting activism, awareness, and identity. In time for Hispanic Heritage Month three films featured include: La Manplesa: An Uprising Remembered, directed by Ellie Walton; Zach Ingrasci’s and Chris Temple’s Five Years North; and We Like It Like That by Mathew Ramirez Warren. Little Miss Westie, directed by Joy E. Reed and Dan Hunt airs in October as part of LGBTQ History Month. For November’s Native American Heritage Month, America ReFramed spotlights issues impacting Indigenous communities with Sisters Rising by directors Willow O’Feral and Brad Heck; and Daughter of a Lost Bird, directed by Brooke Swaney. Deann Borshay Liem’s Geographies of Kinship closes November which is also National Adoption Month.

America ReFramed is available onworldchannel.org, amdoc.org, WORLD’s YouTube Channel and on all station-branded PBS platforms, includingPBS.org and thePBS Video app, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. Episodes of America ReFramed also roll out weekly on-air and online on Link TV (Direct TV channel 375 & Dish Network channel 9410).

For full line-up, visit americareframed.com

America ReFramed Season 11 New National Broadcast Premieres

Running with My Girls
(Premieres September 14, 2023 at 8PM ET/7C)

Director: Rebekah Henderson (What Makes A Mother?, All Mixed Up: Our Changing Racial Identities)

Producers: Rebekah Henderson, Sara McKellogg Lane
Year: 2021 I Country: USA I Runtime: 97 minutes

Tired of watching local government ignore their communities’ interests, five diverse female activists decide to run for municipal office in Denver — one of the fastest gentrifying cities in the country. Using an intimate and unfiltered style to tell each candidate’s story, filmmaker Rebekah Henderson honestly portrays the challenges faced by political outsiders, particularly women of color, while also revealing their tenacious commitment to justice and democracy. Ultimately, Running with My Girls is a lesson about an engaged community outrunning the deep pockets of the political establishment and a demonstration that building a new kind of political power is not just aspirational but possible. Running with My Girls trailer.

No Time to Fail
(Premieres October 26, 2023 at 8PM ET/ 7C)

Directors/Producers: Sara Archambault, Margo Guernsey

Year: 2021 I Country: USA I Runtime: 92 minutes

Despite unbelievable challenges and attempts to disrupt the 2020 election, Rhode Island's local election administrators helped pull off the most secure election in our history amidst a global pandemic. Rather than receiving a hero's welcome, election officials have become the focus of an ongoing coordinated campaign of disinformation. No Time to Fail gives voice to the experiences of this largely invisible, yet completely indispensable workforce, at this critical time in our country's relationship with election management. No Time to Fail trailer.

By Water
(Premieres December 14, 2023 at at 8PM ET/ 7C)

Director: Iyabo Kwayana

Producer: Nevo Shinaar

Year: 2022 I Country: USA I Runtime: 12 minutes

By Water is the first animated experimental film to appear on America ReFramed. The story follows an unlikely hero's journey into his own memories, which transform into a vehicle for reconciliation and healing for himself and his sibling. Based on a true story, the film was written and inspired by Iyabo Kwayana’s personal experience with her brother. Upon receiving an unexpected voicemail from him three years after his disappearance, filmmaker Kwayana heeded her brother’s message and created this film as a way to “complete” his story. By Water trailer.

Town Destroyer
(Premieres November 2, 2023 at 8PM ET/ 7C)

Directors: / Producers: Deborah Kaufman, Alan Snitow

Year: 2022 I Country: USA I Runtime: 53 minutes

Town Destroyer explores the ways we look at art and history at a time of racial reckoning. The story focuses on a passionate dispute over historic murals at San Francisco's George Washington High School depicting the life of George Washington: slave owner, General, land speculator, President, and a man Seneca leaders called “Town Destroyer” after he ordered their villages destroyed during the Revolutionary War. The murals were painted in 1936 by leftwing artist Victor Arnautoff, a student of Diego Rivera. The murals both praise Washington and—rare for the time—critically depict him overseeing his slaves and directing the bloody seizure of Native lands. Most controversial is a provocative image of a dead Indian—life-size, eye-level, and at the center of the school. The controversy becomes a touchstone for a national debate over public art and historic memory. Town Destroyer trailer.

In Search of Bengali Harlem
(Premieres December 21, 2023 at 8PM ET)

Directors: Vivek Bald, Alaudin Ullah

Producer: Susannah Ludwig

Year: 2022 I Country: USA I Runtime: 82 minutes

As a teenager growing up in Harlem's Washington Carver Projects in the 1980s, Alaudin Ullah was swept up in the revolutionary energy of early hip-hop. He rejected his working-class Bangladeshi parents and turned his back on everything South Asian and Muslim. Now, as an actor and playwright contending with the Islamophobia of post-9/11 Hollywood, Alaudin wants to tell his parents’ stories. But he has no idea who they really were, no idea of the lives they led or the struggles they faced as Muslim immigrants of an earlier era. In Search of Bengali Harlem follows Alaudin from the streets of New York City to the villages of Bangladesh to uncover the pasts of his father, Habib, and mother, Mohima. Alaudin discovers that Habib was part of an extraordinary history of mid-20th century Harlem, in which Bengali Muslim men, dodging racist Asian Exclusion laws, married into New York’s African American and Puerto Rican communities – and in which the likes of Malcolm X and Miles Davis shared space and broke bread with immigrants from the subcontinent. Then, after crossing the globe to explore his parents’ roots, Alaudin unearths unsettling truths about his mother: about the hardships and trauma that she overcame to become one of the first women to migrate to the U.S. from rural Bangladesh. In Search of Bengali Harlem is a transformative journey, not just for Alaudin Ullah, but for our understanding of the complex histories of South Asian and Muslim Americans. In Search of Bengali Harlem trailer.

America ReFramed Encore Presentations Schedule

September 2023

9/7- On a Knife Edge

9/21 - Five Years North

9/28 - La Manplesa: An Uprising Remembered

October 2023

10/5 - We Like It Like That

10/12 - Busy Inside

10/19 - Little Miss Westie

November 2023

11/9 - Sisters Rising

11/16 - Blood Memory

11/23 - Daughter of a Lost Bird

11/30 - Geographies of Kinship

December 2023

12/7 - Haydn & Her Family

12/28 - From Here

A tentpole program of public television’s WORLD, America ReFramed brings to life compelling stories, personal voices and experiences that illuminate the contours of our ever-changing country. Since 2012, the anthology series has premiered 182 films from more than 380 filmmakers, including works from established artists like Shola Lynch, Deann Borshay Liem and Marshall Curry and featured broadcast debuts of Nicholas Bruckman, Ursula Liang and PJ Raval. More than half of these documentaries were helmed by female filmmakers and a third are credited to BIPOC filmmakers. The series has centered the stories of the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, veterans, seniors, immigrants and people from a myriad of backgrounds.

About

About America ReFramed

America ReFramed is a co-production of WORLD and American Documentary, Inc. The series curates a diverse selection of independent documentaries that brings to national audiences compelling stories which illuminate the changing contours of our ever-evolving country. Viewers will be immersed in stories that span the spectrum of American life, from the streets of towns big and small to its exurbs and country roads. The documentary series presents an array of personal voices and experiences through which we learn from our past, understand our present and are challenged to seek new frameworks for America’s future.

America ReFramed received a Peabody Award for Deej and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for Class of ‘27. The series has earned several Christopher, GRACIE, Telly and Cine Golden Eagle Awards, as well as multiple nominations for Emmy, Independent Documentary Association and Imagen Awards.

About American Documentary, Inc.

American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia company dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, the Open Society Foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Park Foundation, and Perspective Fund. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Sage Foundation, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, GBH in Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.

About WORLD

WORLD shares the best of public media in news, documentaries and programming. WORLD’s original series examine the issues and amplify the voices of those often ignored by mainstream media. The multiplatform channel helps audiences understand conflicts, movements and cultures from around the globe. Its original work has won a Peabody Award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award, an International Documentary Association Award, a National News and Documentary Emmy Award, two Webby Awards and many others honoring diversity of content and makers. WORLD is carried by 194 member stations in markets representing 77% of US TV households. Funding for WORLD is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Wyncote Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. WORLD is produced by GBH in partnership with WNET and is distributed by American Public Television (APT). Find out more at WORLDChannel.org.