POV Shorts: Season 2 Announcement
Overview
American Documentary's short-form broadcast series returns for its second season premiering on PBS
The upcoming season of POV Shorts will contain twelve episodes, made available online beginning July 22.
New York, N.Y. — July 18, 2019 — POV Shorts, American Documentary's newest broadcast series, begins its 2nd season on PBS July 22 and streaming on amdoc.org/watch. Launched last year as one of the first series on public television dedicated to independent short-form documentaries, the series returns with critically-acclaimed projects packaged into eight episodes. Episodes will be made available to PBS programmers on select dates through October.
The upcoming season of POV Shorts expands from its previous run of one to three episodes, packaging a diverse range of short-form content into larger episodes of under half an hour. Notable standouts include Post-Colonial Queer, which consists of three shorts that each highlight different forms of queer identity across the world. The series also includes Stay Close and Edgecombe, two shorts which premiered at Sundance earlier this year. .
Started in 2018, POV Shorts sources films through a variety of channels, particularly its open call for entries page (cfe.pov.org). It works with other major short-form digital distributors, including The New York Times Op-Docs, Field of Vision and Conde Nast.
“Last year's inaugural season of POV Shorts was wildly successful.” said POV Shorts and Streaming Producer Chloe Gbai, “Marshall Curry's Night at the Garden received an Oscar nomination, and our series secured PBS' place as the home of documentaries. This season, Season 2 comes with storytellers our commercial peers often overlook, with half the shorts helmed by a director of color.”
For a list of films and episodes see below:
About POV
POV (pbs.org/pov)
Produced by American Documentary, POV is the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Since 1988 on PBS, POV has presented films that capture the full spectrum of the human experience, with a long commitment to centering women and people of color in front of, and behind, the camera. It's on POV where American television audiences were introduced to groundbreaking works like Tongues Untied, The Act of Killing and American Promise and innovative filmmakers including Jonathan Demme, Nanfu Wang, and Laura Poitras. In 2018, POV Shorts launched as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries.Over a generation, POV has championed accessibility and innovation in nonfiction storytelling. POV Engage works with educators, community organizations and PBS stations to present more than 800 free screenings every year, inspiring dialogue around today's most pressing social issues. The series' interactive arm, POV Spark, creates and advances experiential forms of storytelling and programming, redefining U.S. public media to be more inclusive of emerging technologies and interactive makers.POV films and projects have won 38 Emmy Awards, 23 George Foster Peabody Awards, 12 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards and the first-ever George Polk Documentary Film Award. Learn more at pbs.org/pov and follow @povdocs on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
American Documentary (www.amdoc.org)
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 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and the Wyncote Foundation. Additional funding comes from The Reva & David Logan Foundation, Nancy Blachman and David desJardins, Bertha Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Chicago Media Project, Sage Foundation, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Charitable Trust, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Lefkofsky Family Foundation, Educational Foundation of America, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.