American Documentary

Overview

New York, N.Y. — Wednesday, July 6, 2022 — POV Shorts, the best and boldest independent non-fiction short films curated by POV (America's longest-running documentary series), announced today the acquisition of six new short documentary films: Chilly and Milly, Coming Home,Freedom Swimmer,My Duduś and You Can't Stop Spirit that premiered at the 2022 Palm Springs International ShortFest, and Shut Up and Paint an official selection of the 2022 Tribeca Festival.

The six films will air on PBS stations, and stream on POV.org, as part of the upcoming fifth season of POV Shorts. The full season lineup will be announced at a later date.

The award-winning POV Shorts series, which launched in 2018, won Best Short Form Series at the IDA Documentary Awards in 2021 and POV Shorts selection The Love Bugs won Outstanding Short Documentary from the News & Documentary Emmy Awards in 2021.

“We are thrilled to have these outstanding titles as part of the upcoming season of POV Shorts,” said Opal H. Bennett, co-producer for POV. “Each one illuminates a particular identity, experience, and place in time which we are glad to see resonating with festival audiences. This upcoming season marks five years of POV Shorts and we're so glad to have each of these films in this anniversary year.”

Programming Information

Chilly and Milly
Director/Producer: William D. Caballero
Producer: Elaine Del Valle
9 MIN | USA | 2022

Eleven years after filming a documentary about his family, director William D. Caballero returns home to revisit scenes with his parents in the animated short, Chilly and Milly. Chilly, William’s father, is a diabetic with kidney failure while Milly sees herself as a caretaker. Watching the documentary, Chilly and Milly discuss their life together, including their successes and setbacks. 2022 Palm Springs International ShortFest Selection. 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Best Documentary Short, 2022 Atlanta Film Festival. 2022 PBS Short Film Festival Selection.

Coming Home
Directors/Producers: Naim Naif, Margot Bowman
Producer: Meghan Doherty
10 MIN | USA/UK | 2022

Freedom Dabka Group, a collective of Palestinian-American dancers use the traditional Dabka as a way to connect to their community and homeland. 2022 SXSW Film Festival 2022 Palm Springs International ShortFest Selection. 2022 Wyncote Fellowship participant.

Freedom Swimmer
Director/Producer: Olivia Martin-McGuire
Producers: Brooke Silcox, Ron Dyens
15 MIN | Australia/France/UK/Hong Kong | 2022

The story of a grandfather’s perilous swim from China to Hong Kong that parallels his granddaughter’s own quest for a new freedom. MOZAIK Bridging the Borders Award, 2022 Palm Springs International ShortFest. Best International Short Film, 2022 Doc Edge Film Festival. Best Animation, 2022 Aspen Film Festival.

My Duduś
Director: Tom Krawczyk
Writer/Editor: Colin Santangelo
Producer: Nick J. Santore
9 MIN | USA | 2022

A Polish mother grieves when her only child leaves their home in the suburbs of Chicago to study in Poland. While her son is away, she finds a baby squirrel in her backyard and forges a unique and powerful bond with the animal, raising him as if he were her own child. 2022 SXSW Film Festival. 2022 San Francisco International Film Festival. Audience Award, 2022 Chicago Critics Film Festival.

Shut Up and Paint
Directors: Titus Kaphar; Alex Mallis
Producer: Chloe Gbai
Executive Producers: Perri Peltz; Matthew O’Neill
20 MIN | USA | 2022

Painter Titus Kaphar looks to film as a medium in the face of an insatiable art market seeking to silence his activism. 2022 Tribeca Film Festival’s "Portraits and Performance: Celebrating Black Art & Artists'' program. Best Short, 2022 Big Sky Film Festival & 2022 IFF Boston. 2022 BAM CinemafestSelection.

You Can’t Stop Spirit
Director/Producer: Vashni Korin
16 MIN | USA | 2021

You Can’t Stop Spirit centers the Baby Doll Mardi Gras masking tradition: a group of self-liberated Black women who created an alternative social space where they are encouraged to be free. 2022 Palm Springs International ShortFest Selection. Best Documentary Short, 2021 Indie Memphis Film Festival. 2021 Reel South Award. 2021 BlackStar Film Festival Selection.

POV Shorts episodes will be available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS Video app, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.

In addition to standard closed captioning, POV partners with DiCapta for audio description services to provide real time audio or text interpretations for audiences with sensory disabilities. Films are accompanied by free educational resources, with many available for local screenings through POV’s Community Network digital lending library.

About the Filmmakers

William D. Caballero, Director/Producer, Chilly and Milly

William D. Caballero is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, multimedia storyteller, 2018 Guggenheim Fellow, and 2021 Creative Capital Award recipient. Born in Coney Island, New York and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Caballero obtained the Gates Millennium Scholarship in 2001, and returned to New York City where he graduated from Pratt Institute (BFA Digital Art, 2006, Minor in Art History) and New York University (MA The Arts and Humanities in Education, 2008). Caballero’s directorial films have debuted at the 2017 and 2022 Sundance Film Festival, 2013 Slamdance Film Festival, and the Museum of Modern Art, and on major networks, such as HBO, PBS, Univision, and World Channel. He aims to empower all creatives to tell their own stories in their own unique voice.

Elaine Del Valle, Producer, Chilly and Milly

Elaine Del Valle is an award-winning producer, writer, and director. Her original drama pilot, The System, is currently in development at CBS. She is a WarnerMedia 150 artist in the process of directing a film adaptation of her award-winning autobiographical stage play, Brownsville Bred. Elaine’s latest short films, Me 3.769 and Princess Cut, can be seen on HBO.

Naim Naif, Director/Producer, Coming Home

Naim Naif is a Palestinian-American filmmaker. Born in the States, and raised between Florida and Palestine. His directorial debut was the short documentary film, Coming Home (World Premiere SXSW 2022). Naim also works as a producer and UPM, with his most recent credit on HBO's How To With John Wilson. Currently based in New York City. He is a 2022 Wyncote Fellow, a program administered by American Documentary in collaboration with PBS Indies partners.

Margot Bowman, Director/Producer, Coming Home

Born and raised in London Margot Bowman uses film to build bridges. Accessible spaces of possibility and power that connect us to ourselves and each other. Inspired by her home city's legacy of club culture; creativity, freedom of expression and community set the tone for her visually striking approach to storytelling. Using the medium to explore identity and belonging through this lens her internationally recognised work (Ciclope, Emmys®, D&AD, UKVMAs, British Arrows, Cannes Lions) spans documentary, music video, commercial and narrative filmmaking. Represented by Prettybird, her commercial clients include Nike, Simple, Hey Girls and Carhart, with narrative/documentary commissions from the likes of Channel 4, The Tate, Dazed and Nowness. Bowman is a Royal Society of the Arts Fellow and is a 2022 Wyncote Fellow, a program administered by American Documentary in collaboration with PBS Indies partners. Coming Home, her recent documentary short had its World Premiere at SXSW 2022.

Meghan Doherty, Producer, Coming Home

Meghan Doherty is a producer based in Brooklyn. She is the producer/writer for feature Sylvio (dir. Albert Birney & Kentucker Audley, SXSW 2017, IFFB, ATL), and produced Coming Home (SXSW 2022, Palm Springs), The Naked Woman (2018 Venice Biennale Cinema College, Short of the Week). Meghan is the author/illustrator of “How Not to Be a Dick: An Everyday Etiquette Guide” (Lerner Books), an IPPY Gold Humor Award recipient. She is currently In post for the feature film Darla In Space (dir. Eric Laplante & Susie Moon).

Olivia Martin-McGuire, Director/Producer, Freedom Swimmer

Olivia is a filmmaker, originally from Sydney, via Shanghai and Hong Kong, now living in London. Freedom Swimmer is her second film. Her first film, the documentary Chinalove was awarded the Create NSW/ABC Arts Documentary Feature Fund and is now on Netflix. Olivia comes from a career as a photographer, working for various international publications and companies including being featured in TIME Magazine's LightBox for her photojournalism work in China. She has a BFA (Hons) in Photomedia and has exhibited widely at commercial galleries, museums, and photo festivals.

Brooke Silcox, Producer, Freedom Swimmer

Brooke is an award winning drama and documentary producer from Australia and the founder of No Thing Productions. Brooke won the Screenwest Emerging Producer Prize of $100,000 and was selected as one of Screen Producers Australia “Ones to Watch” and won the prestigious Brian Beaton award for recognition of social impact through film. Awards include Best Short Film for Judas Collar (Austin, St Kilda), Best Documentary Meal Tickets (Melbourne) and RocKabul (Arizona, Mississippi and Sydney). Brooke associate produced the feature film Jirga, which was Australia’s Academy Awards submission for Best Foreign Film in 2019 and winner of Australia’s Richest Film Prize.

Ron Dyens, Producer, Freedom Swimmer

In 1999, Ron Dyens became the director of the L’Archipel Paris Cinema (two rooms), and in the same year he created his production company Sacrebleu Productions. Since then, nearly 80 short films have been produced, winning selection at more than 1,500 French and foreign festivals. Sacrebleu Productions has received prestigious awards such as la Palme d’or at Cannes, the César, the Silver Bear, the Procirep Award, two Crystals at Annecy, Grand Prix Reanimania and also an Oscar® nomination among many others. He has been a member of l’Académie de César, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a Knight of the National Order of Merit since 2019. He has also been elected to the Committee of Feature Film Producers at UniFrance.

Tom Krawczyk, Director, My Duduś

Born and raised in Chicago, Tom Krawczyk is a recent graduate of Łódź Film School’s Cinematography, Television Production and Photography MFA program in Poland. He also has an Education degree and has taught English to middle school students in South Korea. Later, he lived in India, New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and Myanmar, working as a photography instructor for high school students. It was his appreciation for skateboarding that introduced him to photography and filmmaking.

Nick J. Santore, Producer, My Duduś

Nick J. Santore is an LA-based filmmaker and designer who was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. When he was 6, his family moved to Arizona where he spent the first half of his adolescence before returning to his hometown. His upbringing inspired a successful run producing coming-of-age short films in Chicago, most notably the documentary Nick Santore (CIFF 2015, Vimeo Staff Pick), which examines his own father-son relationship. While in Chicago, he co-founded two production companies where he worked as a creative and executive producer on award-winning films, music videos, and content for brands such as Wrangler, Uber and Intel. His latest documentary short My Duduś (Producer) premiered at the 2022 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival where it was nominated for Best Mini-Doc and has gone on to screen at several other festivals including SXSW, SFFILM, and SIFF. Nick’s primary objective is to continue producing content that explores humanism, naturalism, spirituality, lineage, and tradition.

Colin Santangelo, Writer/Editor, My Duduś

Colin has worked at studios, agencies, and production companies – helping to create documentaries, broadcast spots, TV shows, and branded content. His work is immersive and heartfelt, with a healthy dash of wit. As a versatile storyteller, Colin’s capabilities extend beyond the editor’s seat. Notable achievements include: leading the post production team on MotorTrend’s Garage Squad, serving as writer and editor of My Duduś (SXSW, SIFF, Big Sky, SFFilm), and voicing toy Skeletor in Rocket Mortgage’s Superbowl LVI commercial Dream House.

Titus Kaphar, Director, Shut Up and Paint

Titus Kaphar received an MFA from the Yale School of Art and is the recipient of a 2016 Robert R. Rauschenberg Artist as Activist grant, a 2018 Art for Justice Fund grant, and a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship, among others. Kaphar’s painting was featured on the cover of the June 15, 2020 issue of TIME. His lauded 2017 TED talk has received 2.8 million views to date. Kaphar’s work is included in the collections of Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, amongst others.

Alex Mallis, Director, Shut Up and Paint

Alex Mallis is a Cuban-American Jewish filmmaker raised in New Hampshire now living in Brooklyn, NY. His films have been selected for multiple festivals internationally. Online, his work has been featured by The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Pitchfork, The Huffington Post, and Vimeo Staff Picks. His 2017 documentary series American Boyband was broadcast on ViceTV. His short documentary Shut Up and Paint was awarded Grand Jury Prize at IFF Boston and Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in 2022. Alex received an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College (CUNY) and is an active member of the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective and the Meerkat Media Collective.

Chloe Gbai, Producer, Shut Up And Paint

Chloe Gbai is an Emmy-nominated producer and creative exec who's worked at Netflix, Field of Vision, Tribeca Film Institute and POV. Some of the award-winning titles she’s overseen include Stay Close, A Night At The Garden, and Three Songs for Benazir. She is a proud member of Brown Girls Doc Mafia, a 2020 Impact Partners Producing Fellow, a DOC NYC New Leader, and a member-in-residence of the Meerkat Media Collective.

Perri Peltz, Executive Producer, Shut Up and Paint

Perri Peltz is an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and public health advocate. Most recently, Perri created the Emmy-winning documentary news series Axios on HBO with Matthew O’Neill. Perri and Matthew also co-directed and produced the 2019 HBO Documentary Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America. Previously, Perri directed the HBO documentary Warning: This Drug May Kill You, about the opioid addiction epidemic. She produced the HBO documentary Risky Drinking and co-directed A Conversation About Growing Up Black as part of the “Conversation on Race” series for The New York Times Op-Docs. Other films include HBO’s Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr. and Prison Dogs. Perri hosts “The Perri Peltz Show” on SiriusXM and is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University's School of Public Health. She was previously an award-winning broadcast journalist for NBC, ABC, and CNN.

Matthew O'Neill, Executive Producer, Shut Up and Paint

Matthew O'Neill is an Emmy-winning and Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker and journalist. He most recently created the Emmy-winning HBO documentary news series Axios on HBO with Perri Peltz. Perri and Matthew also co-directed and produced the 2019 HBO Documentary Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America. Matthew has been making non-fiction television and films with Downtown Community Television Center, Inc, (DCTV) in NYC's Chinatown for the last 20 years. His earlier films for HBO, ESPN, Netflix and FRONTLINE have focused on everything from the Egyptian Revolution to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the American criminal justice system. For his filming he has been recognized with two Columbia DuPont Awards, a Peabody Award, an Overseas Press Club Award, four Emmy Awards and two Oscar® nominations.

Vashni Korin, Director/Producer, You Can’t Stop Spirit

Vashni Korin is a Caribbean-American filmmaker and artist based in Los Angeles. Born in New York with roots in Puerto Rico and the West Indies, her cultural background has influenced much of her research as she connects the larger diaspora through folklore, spirituality and celebration. Her fellowships include 2022 Tribeca Film Festival’s Queen Collective and 2020-2021 New Orleans Film Society Emerging Voices. Her short You Can't Stop Spirit explores themes of identity, sexual liberation, and the freedom that carnival lends in New Orleans amongst Black women. This work received the Best Documentary Award at the New Orleans Film Festival and Indie Memphis, the Reel South award, and Best Short nomination at Blackstar Film Festival.

About

About POV Shorts

POV Shorts launched in 2018 as one of the first PBS series dedicated to bold and timely short-form documentaries.The series is known for its curation, and for broadcasting award-winning titles, including: Emmy® nominated Earthrise, Water Warriors, The Changing Same, the Emmy® winner The Love Bugs and the Oscar® shortlisted A Broken House and Aguilas.

About POV

Produced by American Documentary, POV is the longest-running independent documentary showcase on American television. Since 1988, POV has presented films on PBS that capture the full spectrum of the human experience, with a long commitment to centering women and people of color in front of, and behind, the camera. All POV programs are available for streaming concurrent with broadcast on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS Video app, available on iOS, Android, Roku streaming devices, Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, Chromecast and VIZIO. For more information about PBS Passport, visit the PBS Passport FAQ website.

POV goes “beyond the broadcast” to bring powerful nonfiction storytelling to viewers wherever they are. Free educational resources accompany every film and a community network of thousands of partners nationwide work with POV to spark dialogue around today’s most pressing issues. POV continues to explore the future of documentary through innovative productions with partners such as The New York Times and The National Film Board of Canada and on platforms including Snapchat and Instagram.

POV films and projects have won 45 Emmy Awards, 27 George Foster Peabody Awards, 15 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards and the first-ever George Polk Documentary Film Award. Learn more at pbs.org/pov and follow @povdocs on social media.

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About American Documentary, Inc.

American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia company dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, the Open Society Foundations, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Wyncote Foundation, Reva & David Logan Foundation, Park Foundation, and Perspective Fund. Additional funding comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Sage Foundation, Chris and Nancy Plaut, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.