POV Season 18

The Hobart Shakespeareans of Hobart Boulevard Elementary School is a 2005 documentary film that tells the story of the inspirational inner-city Los Angeles school teacher Rafe Esquith whose rigorous fifth-grade curriculum includes English, mathematics, geography, and literature. The pinnacle of student achievement each year is the performance of a play by William Shakespeare; in the year of filming, that play was Hamlet. The Hobart Shakespeareans drew the attention of renowned Shakespearean actors Ian McKellen and Michael York, who pay a visit to the class to watch their performance of Hamlet. Delighted with the students, York calls the Hobart Shakespeareans "one of the great Shakespeare troupes" in Los Angeles. Rafe and the Hobart Shakespeareans work hard every year to achieve a beautiful Shakespeare play. The recent plays they have performed were As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice. The Hobart Shakespeareans aired on PBS' P.O.V. series in 2005. It was produced and directed by Mel Stuart.

Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust is 2004 documentary film about Menachem Daum, an Orthodox Jew and son of German Nazi Holocaust survivors who has spent his life interviewing survivors about the impact of the Holocaust on their lives. After hearing a disturbing tape of a rabbi openly preaching "hatred" of non-Jews, Daum attempts to raise an outcry in his Brooklyn Orthodox community. When ignored by the media and community leaders, Daum decides to fly to Israel to discuss the matter with his two sons, concerned with the "ethical legacy" he is responsible for leaving them. Hiding and Seeking was produced, written, and directed by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky and aired on PBS's Point of View series in 2005. It has been met with high critical praise, receiving a 90% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Bright Leaves is a 2003 documentary film by independent filmmaker Ross McElwee about the association his family had with the tobacco industry. Bright Leaf is the name of a strain of tobacco. It was also the name of a 1949 novel and 1950 feature film about a struggle between two tobacco barons. The struggle depicted in the film, according to McElwee family tradition, parallels the historical one between McElwee's great-grandfather and the patriarch of the Duke family who founded Duke University. The documentary follows McElwee's usual style, where he gives voiceovers to apparently spontaneous footage, making the story more personal.

Hardwood is a 2005 short documentary film about Canadian director Hubert Davis' relationship to his father, former Harlem Globetrotters member Mel Davis. Through interviews with his mother, his father's wife, his half-brother, and Mel Davis himself, Hubert Davis explores why Mel made the decisions that he did, and how that has affected his life. Hardwood was met with high critical acclaim and received an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject nomination. It also aired on PBS as part of its Point of View series in 2005.

In the Realms of the Unreal is a 2004 documentary about outsider artist Henry Darger. An obscure janitor during his life, Darger is known for the posthumous discovery of his elaborate 15,143-page fantasy manuscript entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred watercolor paintings and other drawings illustrating the story.

A follow-up to the 1982 Emmy-nominated film Little People, Big Enough is a 2004 documentary film about Anu Trombino, Karla and John Lizzo, Len and Lenette Sawisch, and Sharon and Ron Roskamp, who are all typical Americans in every respect, except that they are dwarfs. Twenty years after her first film, Jan Krawitz finds out what has happened to her subjects. Big Enough was met with high critical acclaim, receiving an Independent Filmmaker Award from the Carolina Film & Video Festival and was aired as part of PBS's Point of View series in 2005.

The Education of Shelby Knox is 2005 documentary film that tells the coming-of-age story of public speaker and feminist Shelby Knox, a teenager who joins a campaign for comprehensive sex education in the high schools of Lubbock, Texas. TEOSK was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 and aired on PBS’ P.O.V. series that same year. It was directed and produced by Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt.

Chisholm `72: Unbought Unbossed is a PBS P.O.V. documentary about Shirley Chisholm.