Eyes on the Prize

Mississippi: Is This America? 1963-1964

Bridge to Freedom 1965

THURSDAY, APRIL 15 @ 7:00PM & 12:00AM

Eyes on the Prize is an award-winning 14-hour television series produced by Blackside and narrated by Julian Bond. Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, the series covers all of the major events of the civil rights movement from 1954-1985.

Series topics range from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1954 to the Voting Rights Act in 1965; from community power in schools to “Black Power” in the streets; from early acts of individual courage through to the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions.

When Eyes on the Prize premiered in 1987, The Los Angeles Times called it “an exhaustive documentary that shouldn’t be missed.” The series went on to win six Emmys and numerous other awards, including an Academy Award nomination, the George Foster Peabody Award, and the top duPont-Columbia award for excellence in broadcast journalism.
Find out more »

MLK: A Call to Conscience

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31 @ 6:00PM

The program explores the relevance of King’s anti-war position to the current U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the significance of the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor bestowed upon both King and President Barack Obama.

Tavis Smiley Reports MLK: A Call to Conscience is based on dozens of hours of interviews with King’s friends and with scholars who study his legacy, including:

• Dr. Vincent Harding, drafter of the “Beyond Vietnam” speech

• Clarence Jones, King’s legal advisor

• Dr. Cornel West, a leading expert on race in America

• Dr. Susannah Heschel, daughter of activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

• Dr. Clayborne Carson, director of the King Institute at Stanford University

• Marian Wright Edelman, Organizer for the Poor People’s Campaign with King

• Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning King historian

Find out more »

RAT ATTACK

SATURDAY, AUGUST 6 @ 6:00PM & 11:00PM

Once every 48 years, forests of the bamboo known as Melocanna baccifera go into exuberant flower in parts of northeast India. And then, like clockwork, the event is invariably followed by a plague of black rats that spring from nowhere to spread destruction and famine in their wake. For the first time on film, NOVA and National Geographic capture this massive rat population explosion in the kind of vivid detail not possible in 1959, when the last invasion occurred.

Find out more »

VICTORY IN THE PACIFIC

MONDAY, MARCH 29 @ 6:00PM & 10:00PM

In this provocative, thorough examination of the final months of the war, American Experience looks at the escalation of bloodletting from the vantage points of both the Japanese and the Americans. Despite warnings that his country, brought to its knees by the conflict, might erupt in a Communist revolution, Emperor Hirohito believed that one last decisive battle could reverse Japan’s fortunes. From the U.S. capture of the Mariana Islands through the firebombing of Tokyo and the dropping of the atomic bomb, Victory in the Pacific chronicles the dreadful and unprecedented loss of life and the decisions made by leaders on both sides that finally ended the war.

Find out more »

CLEVER MONKEYS

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 @ 6:00PM & 9:00PM

Just how smart are monkeys? Their innate curiosity leads them to try new things, but it’s their culture –  the passing of information from one generation to the next – that teaches them much of what they know. Their young learn by reaching out with their hands to experience the world around them, grasping new objects, slowly piecing together an understanding of their society. They learn from their families how to find food, communicate, recognize kin, even use tools, medicine, and language. It is these familiar actions that make monkeys so fascinating to humans. We can see ourselves in their faces, our nature in their actions.

Find out more»

THURSDAY, MARCH 25 @ 8:00PM

They were in the cosmetic industry, but they were more than that. They were giants of industry. They created an industry. It just so happened it was in the world of powder and paint.
—Shirley Lord, Senior Editor, Vogue

The Powder & the Glory, a 90-minute documentary narrated by Jane Alexander, tells the story of two of the first highly successful women entrepreneurs — Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein. One hundred years ago these women immigrated to America and, starting with next to nothing, created what is today the $150 billion global health and beauty industry.

Operating in major cities all over the world, their competing companies defined the business of beauty, making cosmetics both newly respectable and, finally, indispensable. They developed advertising and marketing techniques that became part of the business landscape, and they themselves became household names and cultural icons. When they started their businesses, makeup was used mostly by prostitutes and performers, and businesses were run mostly by men. They changed the way we look at ourselves, built powerful businesses, and became two of the world’s wealthiest women.
Find out more »

Dance In America: NY Export: Opus Jazz

FRIDAY, JUNE 21 @ 8:00PM

Find out more

CLOSE TO HOME

TUESDAY, MARCH 23 @ 7:00PM & 10:00PM

As the U.S. unemployment rate hits a 25-year high and the Dow Jones Industrial Average hits a six-year low, award-winning FRONTLINE producer Ofra Bikel chronicles the recession’s impact on one unlikely American neighborhood — New York’s Upper East Side.

In Close to Home, Bikel sets up her cameras in the hair salon she’s patronized for 20 years. It’s an intimate space where she has come to know well the surprisingly diverse clientele — from athletic trainers and housewives to high-end bankers, actors and opera singers. Despite expectations that this neighborhood is a secure bastion of privilege, these days, when clients get in the chair, they offer a window into the country in recession: Some are broke, others don’t have a plan, and they’re all looking to commiserate.
Find out more »