If you're in Santa Monica, tune in to KCRW's The Treatment to hear Elvis Mitchell interview The English Surgeon's Geoffrey Smith today, September 2, at 2:30 PM.
Geoffrey discusses the making of the film about brain surgeon Henry Marsh, who performs pro bono work in a decrepit Ukrainian KGB hospital; the real-life drama that propelled the film's theatrical nature; the dark sense of humor, hope and maverick attitude shared by Henry and his Ukrainian counterpart, Igor Kurilets; and how Nick Cave and Warren Ellis scored his film in three days.
If you aren't in Santa Monica, the show will be archived on the KCRW site and available on the POV site within the next few days. Check back for more details!
The English Surgeon airs on POV next Tuesday, September 8.
The June 19 premiere of 
If you're in New York, head on over to Brooklyn to check out the BAMcinemaFEST. They've got some great documentaries lined up over the next two weeks, including 
Do you know how the food you're eating got to your table? 
For the last year and a half, since our broadcast premiere on POV the day after Labor Day 2007, we have been traveling with 
Aaron Matthews: As we can see from the last election, the subject of immigration continues to spark lively debate in this country. So in a general sense, it's always useful to have films like My American Girls that put a human face on a hot-button issue. In specific, My American Girls still seems to resonate. Random people — of many different backgrounds — STILL come up to Sandra Ortiz in New York City (often in the subway) to hug her and say things like "You're just like my mother!" All that tells me the film remains relevant and that what the Ortizes go through and what they represent is a fundamental part of the American experience. (Also, I'm told that even though Dominicans are still the largest and fastest growing immigrant group in New York, My American Girls is the only documentary that deals with the contemporary Dominican immigrant experience.)
James Moll is the director of 
Many viewers have written in after seeing 
Gary Weimberg and Catherine Ryan produced and directed 
Joanna Rudnick is the director of 
Lt. Col. Pete Kilner is a professor at the United States Military Academy at West Point and a former infantry commander. He has written on the subject of unit cohesion and spoken out on the necessity for enhanced preparation for soldiers in the moral justifications for war and killing in combat.
Former West Point cadet Joshua Casteel served in the Army Reserves and was later called up to active duty. He trained as an interrogator and an Arabic language specialist before being sent to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He applied for and was granted conscientious objector status in 2005, receiving an honorable discharge. Now a Catholic, Joshua traveled with a delegation of Catholic leaders to meet with the Pope in March 2007. 
After joining the Army Reserve in 2001, Aidan Delgado developed an interest in Buddhism and began to reconsider the morality of military service. After being called to active duty, Delgado served at the Abu Ghraib prison compound before seeking and receiving conscientious objector status in 2004. In 2008, Aidan moved to Washington D.C. to attend Georgetown Law where he is studying Constitutional and Public Interest law. He is currently working on a second book, a work of fiction. After law school, Aidan plans to return to Florida where he has been involved in Democratic 
The decision to undergo genetic testing is a very personal decision with the potential for some very powerful emotional repercussions, as we witness in Joanna Rudnick's 
When John J. Valadez and Cristina Ibarra, learned that the city of El Paso had commissioned a sculptor to create a statue of Juan de Oñate, they knew they wanted to document the controversial public arts project that had come to be seen as a monument to culture by some, and as a glorification of genocide by others.
Kieran Fitzgerald was only 17 years old in 1997 when a team of Marines shot and killed an innocent American citizen on the Texas-Mexico border. The film, narrated by Tommy Lee Jones, recounts the shooting and killing of a young American named Esequiel Hernández in 1997 by U.S. Marines patrolling the border as part of a counterdrug operation that had been ongoing since the late 1980s.
For the next two weeks, POV and PBS Engage are partnering with 
Katrina Browne says that it can seem as if white people like her have only two choices: "Either listen to African American calls to deal with the history, which can make us feel guilty and bad about ourselves, or shut it all out so we don't have to feel bad." What is a third way? In what ways does our knowledge of history influence our current beliefs and actions?
Juanita Brown tells the group, "It's important for me that white people take responsibility and that ultimately it's about human liberation — liberation of my people and also about your liberation." Do you agree with Juanita? What does "taking responsibility" mean for you? 
Katrina talks in Ghana about being glad that her cousin Dain Perry was on the "hot seat," not her. What are the everyday ways in which you find racial dynamics challenging? In which situations do you get stuck or tongue-tied? 
Last week, President Bush said the U.S. was 
This weekend, Helene Klodawsky's 
In March, 
I think of my film The Tailenders as an essay film (with a strong observational bent). In fact, all of my films are in some way essayistic. The essay film is a sub-genre of documentary. It's a mode that allows the filmmaker to meditate on a theme or explore an idea, rather than being limited to representing real (visible) events. In 1940, Hans Richter wrote a manifesto entitled "The Film Essay: a New Form of Documentary Film," in which he imagined a new genre of film that would make "problems, thoughts, even ideas" perceptible and would "render visible what is not visible." In 1948, Alexandre Astruc coined the term "camera-stylo" to suggest a new means of writing through cinema, with the camera serving as a pen, creating arguments, meditations and inquiries with as much range of form as exists in the written word. 
The documentary winners of the 80th Annual Academy Awards were announced on Sunday night.
And whether the timing was a deliberate act of commemoration or sheer coincidence, AJ Schnack's Kurt Cobain: About a Son (first released in October 2007) has just been released on DVD. It's getting all sorts of great press — the 
Who says Valentine's Day has to be all about flowers and candy? We can all name feature films about romance and passion, but real life is so much more nuanced. There are so many nonfiction films that show "real" love stories about people from all walks of life in real relationships that it can be hard to keep track, so in keeping with the spirit of Valentine's Day, here's a roundup of some POV staffers' favorite documentaries about love:
If you're in New York City, check out MoMA's annual showcase of international documentary films from February 13-March 3. This year's Documentary Fortnight features more than 30 films, with a special focus on docs about the environment, covering a whole range of topics from graffiti in New York to the problems of chemical sensitivities. Another film that looks especially interesting tracks the electoral campaign of Malalai Joya, a woman who successfully ran in the 2005 Afghanistan parliamentary elections. And to spice things up, there's a program dedicated to documentaries made using cell-phones — these videos range from one to fourteen minutes long.
Chevigny: Election Day follows eleven people participating in the electoral process over the course of the day on November 2, 2004. Through the eyes of poll workers, international observers, first time voters, former elected officials, campaigners, and voting rights activists, we tried to show what voting means to Americans. In our filming, we saw a lot of flaws in the system, but we also saw a lot of people trying to make it work.
With Critical Condition, Roger Weisberg takes an unflinching look at what it's like to be sick and uninsured in America. He took a few minutes to answer some questions about his film and why health care and universal health insurance should be a critical issue during this election year. Critical Condition will have its broadcast premiere on POV in 2008.
