NaN/100 votesLoading...#1 - Acting Our Age
Season 1 Episode 1 - Aired 7/5/1988
"There's nobody that's not going to get old — unless they die," says Enola Maxwell at the beginning of this engaging and refreshing film. Through the eyes of six women, aged 65-75, we are treated to a variety of new perspectives on aging, along with such complex and emotional subjects as changing body image, sexuality, family life and dealing with death. Generous portions of insight and good humor provide clues to grappling with these issues that effect us all.
Director: Michal Aviad
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#2 - American Tongues
Season 1 Episode 2 - Aired 7/5/1988
Rich in humor and regional color, this sometimes hilarious film uses the prism of language to reveal our attitudes about the way other people speak. From Boston Brahmins to Black Louisiana teenagers, from Texas cowboys to New York professionals, American Tongues elicits funny, perceptive, sometimes shocking, and always telling comments on American English in all its diversity.
Director: Louis Alvarez, Andrew Kolker
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#3 - Fire From the Mountain
Season 1 Episode 3 - Aired 7/12/1988
Based on the autobiography of Nicaraguan author Omar Cabezas, Fire From the Mountain is the lyrical, earthy, sometimes humorous account of the author's political journey from student activist to guerrilla to government official. Shaffer's last film, Witness to War: Dr. Charlie Clements, won an Oscar in 1985.
Director: Deborah Shaffer
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#4 - Knocking on Armageddon's Door
Season 1 Episode 4 - Aired 7/19/1988
Half comedy, half horror story, this disturbing film focuses on several spokesmen for America's survivalist movement as they reveal the way they think, the way they play, and the way they prepare for the next world war.
Director: Torv Carlsen, John Magnuson
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#5 - Living with AIDS
Season 1 Episode 5 - Aired 7/19/1988
If Armageddon's Door is about the explosion of community, Living with AIDS is just the opposite. It's a graceful, moving film about a community that provides both compassion and care to someone with a debilitating disease, in this case a courageous 22-year-old man with AIDS.
Director: Tina DiFeliciantonio
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#6 - Las Madres: The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo
Season 1 Episode 6 - Aired 8/2/1988
During the late 1970s, tens of thousands of men, women and even children were abducted by the right-wing military government in Argentina. While most of the population was terrorized by these actions, a small group of mothers of the disappeared began staging weekly demonstrations to demand that their children be released and the kidnappers be brought to justice. This is the dramatic story of their courageous struggle, which ultimately served as a catalyst for the toppling of the dictatorship. Las Madres has won multiple awards at film festivals around the world and was nominated for an Oscar.
Director: Susana Blaustein Muñoz, Lourdes Portillo
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#7 - The Good Fight
Season 1 Episode 7 - Aired 8/9/1988
Five years before the United States entered World War II, 3,200 Americans went off to Europe to fight the spread of fascism. At 18, 19 and 20 years old, they volunteered to risk their lives defending a democratically elected government in the Spanish Civil War. Fifty years later, in their own words, the survivors recount a vivid story of those years — and what's happened to them since.
Director: Sam Sills, Noel Buckner, Mary Dore
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#8 - Louie Bluie
Season 1 Episode 8 - Aired 8/23/1988
A lively portrait of 76-year-old Harold "Louie Bluie" Armstrong, musician, artist, raconteur and rogue.
Director: Terry Zwigoff
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#9 - Gates of Heaven
Season 1 Episode 9 - Aired 8/30/1988
On the surface, this is a somewhat unusual film about pet cemeteries and their owners. But then it grows much more complicated and bizarre, until in the end it is about such large issues as love, immorality, failure, and the dogged elusiveness of the American Dream. Featured at major film festivals like New York, Cannes, and Berlin, Gates of Heaven was included in Roger Ebert's all time 10 best list.
Director: Errol Morris
Writer: N/A
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NaN/100 votesLoading...#11 - Rate It X
Season 1 Episode 11 - Aired 7/26/1988
Rate It X is a bitingly funny and disarming journey through the landscape of American sexism. Men only are interviewed by the two filmmakers in a witty montage of free-wheeling encounters. Pornographers, corporate executives, a funeral parlor director and Santa Claus are among those who reveal more than they intended. A surprisingly candid view of men's feelings towards women 15 years after the birth of the women's movement.
Director: Lucy Winer, Paula de Koenigsberg
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#12 - Metropolitan Avenue
Season 1 Episode 12 - Aired 8/16/1988
Metropolitan Avenue is an inspiring contemporary story about women who strive to combine new roles and old values in our rapidly changing society. We are introduced to a lively Brooklyn neighborhood which, like many urban areas, faces problems caused by racial tensions and cuts in municipal services. But in this case, a group of "traditional" homemakers from varied ethnic backgrounds rise to the challenge and become leaders in the effort to save their community.
Director: Christine Noschese
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#13 - Girltalk
Season 2 Episode 1 - Aired 7/15/1989
Girltalk is Kate Davis' heartbreaking yet hopeful portrait of three runaway girls with histories of abuse and neglect. The juvenile courts are after Pinky, a Puerto Rican girl who refuses to go to school. Mars, on the streets since age 13, now works as a stripper. Martha, who has lived in a dozen foster homes, now confronts teenage motherhood. Music, humor, and intimate conversations play against the disturbing reality of these girls' lives.
Director: Kate Davis
Writer: N/A
NaN/100 votesLoading...#14 - Who Killed Vincent Chin?
Season 2 Episode 2 - Aired 7/16/1989
On a hot summer night in Detroit, Ronald Ebens, an autoworker, killed a young Chinese-American engineer with a baseball bat. Although he confessed, he never spent a day in jail. This gripping Academy Award-nominated film relentlessly probes the implications of the murder in the streets of Detroit, for the families of those involved, and for the American justice system.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#15 - Coming Out
Season 2 Episode 3 - Aired 7/23/1989
Coming Out reveals that the debutante tradition is alive and well. Follow Miss Mary Stuart Montague Price, founder and chairman (sic) of the annual Debutante Cotillion in Washington, DC, through the meticulously planned ritual where networking and meeting people who can help you later are as important to todays debs as the style of the gown or the height of the escort.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#16 - Wise Guys!
Season 2 Episode 4 - Aired 7/23/1989
In Wise Guys!, a stamp dealer from Los Angeles, a former school teacher form Miami, a born again Christian from Las Vegas and a whiz kid law student square off in the Jeopardy! $100,000 Tournament of Champions. David Hartwell's fast-paced, sometimes poignant film is a peek behind the scenes and into the fact-filled minds of contestants in one of America's favorite game shows.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#17 - The Family Album
Season 2 Episode 5 - Aired 7/30/1989
Watching The Family Album is like coming across a long-lost box of family photos: it's enchanting, humorous and sometimes even eerie. Director Alan Berliner spent years blending home movies and tape recordings collected from 60 different American families to assemble a composite lifetime which moves from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to experience.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#18 - Dark Circle
Season 2 Episode 6 - Aired 8/6/1989
The Bomb is killing ordinary Americans, even in the absence of a nuclear war. That's the thesis of this chilling — but ultimately hopeful — film which explores in evocative, personal and immediate terms how all of us have been affected by the nuclear age. Denounced by officials and shunned by broadcasters when it was first released, many of the issues it raised have become today's front page headlines.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#19 - Jack Levine: Feast Of Pure Reason
Season 2 Episode 7 - Aired 8/13/1989
David Sutherland's bold and unconventional film portrait reveals one of America's leading Social Realist painters doing what he does best: skewering corrupt politicians, raging over social injustices, and satirizing the petty foibles of humankind.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#20 - No Applause, Just Throw Money
Season 2 Episode 8 - Aired 8/20/1989
On the streets and subways of New York, 101 itinerant performers whirl firesticks, mimic passers-by, imitate Stevie Wonder, tap dance and perform classical music. Karen Goodman's No Applause, Just Throw Money is a delightful mixture of music and magic moments, celebrating some joyful encounters in New York City streets.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#21 - Partisans of Vilna
Season 2 Episode 9 - Aired 8/27/1989
This riveting film recounts the untold story of a handful of Jewish youth who organized an underground resistance against the Nazis in the Lithuanian ghetto of Vilna.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#22 - The Fighting Ministers
Season 2 Episode 10 - Aired 9/3/1989
Moved by the growing desperation of thousands of laid-off steel workers, a group of ministers in Pittsburgh begins to confront the city's government and powerful corporations. Their passionate, controversial and unorthodox actions lead to profound soul-searching, Church rejection and imprisonment.
Director: Richard Wormser
Writer: N/A
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#23 - Binge
Season 2 Episode 11 - Aired 9/17/1989
In Binge, videomaker Lynn Hershman places herself center-screen for an intimate, humorous and piercing narrative about her efforts to control her weight
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#24 - Cowboy Poets
Season 2 Episode 12 - Aired 9/17/1989
For more than a hundred years cowboys have written with feeling about the life and land they love. Kim Shelton's Cowboy Poets is a fascinating portrait of several contemporary poet lariats who keep that tradition alive — even on the Johnny Carson show.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
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#25 - Doug And Mike, Mike And Doug
Season 2 Episode 13 - Aired 9/17/1989
In Doug And Mike, Mike And Doug, Cindy Kleine probes the inner and outer lives of identical twins Doug and Mike Starn, whose collaborative painting and photographic work is rapidly gaining acclaim in the art world.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
The Worst Episodes of POV
Every episode of POV ranked from worst to best. Explore the Worst Episodes of POV!
Since its 1988 premiere, this critically acclaimed documentary series has presented hundreds of films that put a human face on contemporary social issues by relating...
Genre:Documentary
Network:PBS
Worst Episodes Summary
"Acting Our Age" is the worst rated episode of "POV". It scored N/A/10 based on 0 votes. Directed by Michal Aviad and written by N/A, it aired on 7/5/1988. This episode scored NaN points lower than the second lowest rated, "American Tongues".