Like almost anyone who is involved with women’s issues, I spent my Tuesday night watching PBS’s MAKERS documentary, a three-hour look at the women’s movement with nods to its detractors both from within (lesbians, women of color, working-class women) and without (Phyllis Schlafly). The film has started a rich discussion about the lens with which…
If you have plans tonight, cancel them. Instead, sit down in front of your TV to watch “MAKERS: Women Who Make America” on PBS at 8:00 PM EST. (Check local listings if you live in other time zones.) Otherwise, you will miss a remarkable three-hour journey through 50 years of the women’s movement. Even for…
Image courtesy of PBS Woody Allen has always been something of an enigma, slipping effortlessly and Zelig-like from one persona to the next. He started as a gag and television writer (most famously for Sid Caesar), became an extremely successful stand-up comic, wrote humorous essays for The New Yorker (many of which were collected into…
In 1908, in Shreveport, La., a black man named Charles Colman was charged with the rape and murder of a 14-year-old white girl. Colman was drunk, and, a reporter for Collier’s implied, had likely been drinking something called “Black Cock Vigor Gin,” which featured a picture of a nude white woman on its label, along…
As a devoted fan of BBC period dramas and a rabid consumer of British literary culture, the period between January and May when PBS airs “Masterpiece” classic is my favorite TV season. Just last week PBS finished broadcasting the brand-new relaunch of the beloved series “Upstairs Downstairs.” The new series was basically a long pilot…
“The Calling,” a four-hour documentary that aired on PBS in December and screens this month in San Francisco and at Knesseth Israel Congregation in Birmingham, Al., profiles seven young Americans who have chosen to become leaders of their faiths. While the film’s intentions are good and it has interesting moments, seven lives are too many…
Filmmaker Josh Freed is willing to do a lot for the sake of his art, including casting himself in a negative light. His debut documentary, “Five Weddings and a Felony,” which premieres November 6 at the DOC NYC film festival, is Freed’s personal journey as a Jewish 28-year-old New York guy, trying to figure out…
As the site of — depending on how one worships — Abraham’s divinely-commanded sacrifice (and last minute recall) of his son, Jesus’s resurrection from the dead and Mohammed’s ascension to heaven, Jerusalem is no longer the “militarily and strategically” insignificant spot 35 miles off the coast of Mediterranean, that it was 40 centuries ago, according…
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