Taken for a Ride | American Documentary Inc.

Taken for a Ride

POV Season 9

Feature Film
1996

Before freeways, traffic congestion and air pollution, public transportation was a vital part of the American landscape. Jim Klein and Martha Olson weave investigative journalism, urban history and social commentary to uncover General Motors' role in dismantling street car transportation in the 1930's, and in catapulting the automobile to the center of our national culture.

Taken for a Ride

Feature Film
1996

Before freeways, traffic congestion and air pollution, public transportation was a vital part of the American landscape. Jim Klein and Martha Olson weave investigative journalism, urban history and social commentary to uncover General Motors' role in dismantling street car transportation ...

Survivors

Feature Film
2018

Clip

Through the eyes of Sierra Leonean filmmaker Arthur Pratt, Survivors presents an intimate portrait of his country during the Ebola outbreak, exposing the complexity of the epidemic and the sociopolitical turmoil that lies in its wake. During one of the ...

Still Tomorrow

Feature Film
2018

Interview

A village woman with no high school diploma becomes China's most famous poet, and her book of poetry the best-selling such volume in China in the past 20 years. Still Tomorrow follows Yu Xiuhua, a 39-year-old woman living with cerebral ...

The Workers Cup

Feature Film
2018

Clip

In 2022, Qatar will host the biggest sporting event in the world, the FIFA World Cup. But right now, far from the bright lights, star athletes and adoring fans, the tournament is being built on the backs of 1.6 ...

Brimstone & Glory

Feature Film
2018

Feature Film

The National Pyrotechnic Festival in Tultepec, Mexico, is a site of festivity unlike any other in the world. Conflagrant revelry engulfs the town, while artisans show off their technical virtuosity. For the three-quarters of Tultepec residents who work in pyrotechnics ...

Singing With Angry Bird

Feature Film
2018

Feature Film

Jae-Chang Kim runs a children's choir in Pune, India. Although his quick temper earned him the nickname "Angry Bird," he has made significant changes in the lives of the choir children. But skeptical of the practical value of music ...

StoryCorps Shorts: The Temple of Knowledge

Short Film
2018

Short Film

Ronald Clarkâs father was a custodian of a branch of the New York Public Library at a time when caretakers, along with their families, lived in the buildings. With his daughter, Jamilah, Ronald remembers literally growing up in a ...

Cameraperson

Feature Film
2017

Feature Film

A boxing match in Brooklyn; life in postwar Bosnia; the daily routine of a Nigerian midwife; an intimate family moment at home: these scenes and others are woven into a tapestry of footage captured over the twenty-five-year career of cinematographer ...

Joe's Violin

Short Film
2017

Short Film

In the Oscar-nominated Joe's Violin, a donated musical instrument forges an improbable friendship. 91-year-old Holocaust survivor Joe Feingold and 12-year-old Bronx school girl Brianna Perez show how the power of music can bring light in the darkest of times ...

Shalom Italia

Feature Film
2017

Feature Film

In Shalom Italia, three Italian Jewish brothers set off on a journey through Tuscany, in search of a cave where they hid as children to escape the Nazis. Their quest, full of humor, food and Tuscan landscapes, straddles the boundary ...

Presenting Princess Shaw

Feature Film
2017

Feature Film

Samantha Montgomery placed her dreams on YouTube. Then they became a reality. Presenting Princess Shaw is the extraordinary story of an aspiring musician, down on her luck, who inspired internationally famous musician, composer and video artist Ophir "Kutiman" Kutiel to ...

StoryCorps Shorts: School's Out

Short Film
2016

Short Film

Following the federal mandate to integrate schools in the 1950's, Reverend James Seawood recalls how African Americans were forced out of Sheridan, Arkansas, the fate of his beloved school, and the human cost of "urban renewal."

Iris

Feature Film
2016

Feature Film

Iris pairs the late documentarian Albert Maysles (Grey Gardens, Gimme Shelter), then 87, with Iris Apfel, the quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed 93-year-old style maven who has had an outsized presence on the New York fashion scene for decades. More than a ...

The Look of Silence

Feature Film
2016

Feature Film

Joshua Oppenheimer's Oscar®-nominated The Look of Silence is the incredible story of a man confronting his brother's killers and demanding they accept responsibility for their crimes. Adi, an optometrist who survived the 1965 Indonesian genocide, takesÂ this ...

Ai Weiwei

Feature Film
2015

Feature Film

Ai Weiwei has a serious problem with authority: The Chinese government not only kidnapped and imprisoned the world-renowned artist in a secret location for protesting its repressive policies, but after his release it conducted a show trial on baseless charges ...

Art and Craft

Feature Film
2015

Feature Film

Mark Landis is one of the most prolific art forgers of the modern era — and he isn't in it for the money. In the last 30 years he's copied hundreds of pieces, from 15th-century icons to works ...

Hotel 22

Short Film
2015

Short Film

The Line 22 is a bus route that runs 24 hours in Silicon Valley. During the day, it is a regular city bus. But by night, it transforms into an unofficial shelter for the homeless. Commonly referred to as Hotel ...

Cutie and the Boxer

Feature Film
2015

Feature Film

The Academy Award®-nominated Cutie and the Boxer is a moving account of the chaotic and unconventional 40-year love affair and creative partnership between action painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, also an artist. Ushio, who punches canvases with ...

The Storm Makers

Feature Film
2015

Feature Film

Featuring brutally candid testimony, The Storm Makers is a chilling exposÃ© of Cambodia's human trafficking underworld and an eye-opening look at the complex cycle of poverty, despair and greed that fuels this brutal modern slave trade. More than half ...

Beats of the Antonov

Feature Film
2015

Feature Film

Sudan has been in an almost constant state of civil war since it achieved independence in 1956, and it split into a pair of sovereign states in 2011. On the border between the two, Russian-made Antonov planes indiscriminately drop bombs ...

Tea Time

Feature Film
2015

Feature Film

Ritual is often associated with powerful and impersonal institutions, but for five Chilean women, ritual centers on a monthly gathering that has sustained them through 60 years of personal and societal change. Tea Time is a charming and poignant look ...

Film Credits

Jim Klein
Martha Olson

Press Room

POV: 'Still Tomorrow' | Defying Social and Cultural Norms, a Rural Poet Captures a Nation’s Attention POV: 'Whose Streets?' | Tracing a People’s Movement POV: 'The Workers Cup' | The sacrifice of migrant workers for the World Cup

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