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'P.O.V.' documentary set features 15 films | The Honolulu Advertiser | Hawaii's Newspaper
Posted on: Friday, March 2, 2007

'P.O.V.' documentary set features 15 films

By Terry Lawson
Detroit Free Press

With last Sunday's Oscars marking the official end to the movie industry's crazy days, it's time to get real.

The fastest way to do that is by checking out the wealth of new documentary sets released this week, the most comprehensive of which is "POV: 20th Anniversary Collection" (Docudrama).

The elegant package contains 15 acclaimed American documentaries that aired on the PBS series "P.O.V." Seven are being released on disc for the first time.

The previously released films in the set:

  • "Best Boy," Ray Wohl's portrait of his mentally handicapped cousin.

  • "Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision," about the architecture student who designed the Vietnam War Memorial.

  • "Passin' It On," the FBI's efforts to bring down a Black Panthers leader.

  • "Farmingville," a New York town divided by illegal immigration.

  • "Licensed to Kill," Arthur Dong's look at men who have killed gay men.

  • "Regret to Inform," Barbara Sonnenbom visits Vietnam 20 years after her husband was killed there.

  • "Silverlake Life: The View From Here," a diary of a couple coping with AIDs.

  • 1996's "Taking on the Kennedys," about the political neophyte who challenged Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy in 1994.

    Making their first appearance on DVD:

  • "Dark Circle," a warning about nuclear power.

  • "Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story," a man who was held in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans fights to be exonerated.

  • 2000's "Well-Founded Fear," how political asylum is granted.

  • "Leona's Sister Gerri," director Jane Gillooly tries to identify the victim of a fatal illegal abortion that's used in a propaganda photo.

  • "Tongues Untied," Marlon Riggs' examination of what it means to be gay and black.

  • "American Tongues," a look at how people are judged by their accents and verbal skills.

  • "The Chances of the World Changing," about an effort to build a new ark for endangered animals.

    ALSO NEW

    Fans of classic cinema verite documentary and admirers of Bob Dylan will thank Docurama for its newly remastered two-disc "Deluxe Edition of D.A. Pennebaker's 'Don't Look Back' " originally released in 1967. The film is about Dylan on his final all-acoustic tour of England in 1965.

    Even those who admire the film and the artist were troubled by its portrayal of the 23-year-old Dylan as arrogant, aloof and all too impressed by himself, most notably in his charged encounters with a Time reporter and his English rival of the time, Donovan. That makes the newly compiled one-hour "Bob Dylan 1965 Revisited" something of a corrective. Pennebaker used unseen footage that shows the singer-songwriter in a less-confrontational light — and often actually enjoying himself.

    Along with the five audio-only full performances that accompanied the previously released version of the film, this release has a full-size reproduction of a rare paperback book with the film's script and still photos and a clever flip book of the famous "Subterranean Homesick Blues" cue-card scene that's often called the first real rock video.
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