Monthly Archives: November 2018

NATIVE AMERICA is a four-part PBS series that challenges everything we thought we knew about the Americas before and since contact with Europe. It travels through 15,000-years to showcase massive cities, unique systems of science, art, and writing, and 100 million people connected by social networks and spiritual beliefs spanning two continents. The series reveals some of the most advanced cultures in human history and the Native American people who created it and whose legacy continues, unbroken, to this day. The series explores this extraordinary world through an unprecedented combination of cutting edge science and traditional indigenous knowledge. It is NATIVE AMERICA as never seen before-featuring sacred rituals filmed for the first time, history changing scientific discoveries, and rarely heard voices from the living legacy of Native American culture. NATIVE AMERICA rediscovers a past whose splendor and sophistication is only now being realized, and whose story has for too long remained untold. Emmy-award winning cinematographers and Academy Award nominated animators bring to life towering pyramids, sprawling empires, and incredible indigenous legends. NATIVE AMERICA reveals a unifying belief that inspires these diverse cultures – people are deeply connected to earth, sky, water, and all living things. This belief is rooted in millennia of living on this land and continues to resonate in the lives of Native Americans to this day.

Discover how resistance, survival and revival are revealed through an empire of horse-mounted Comanche warriors, secret messages encoded in Aztec manuscript and a grass bridge in the Andes that spans mountains and centuries of time.

Airs on WXXI-TV November 13, 2018 at 10:00 pm
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NATIVE AMERICA is a four-part PBS series that challenges everything we thought we knew about the Americas before and since contact with Europe. It travels through 15,000-years to showcase massive cities, unique systems of science, art, and writing, and 100 million people connected by social networks and spiritual beliefs spanning two continents. The series reveals some of the most advanced cultures in human history and the Native American people who created it and whose legacy continues, unbroken, to this day. The series explores this extraordinary world through an unprecedented combination of cutting edge science and traditional indigenous knowledge. It is NATIVE AMERICA as never seen before-featuring sacred rituals filmed for the first time, history changing scientific discoveries, and rarely heard voices from the living legacy of Native American culture. NATIVE AMERICA rediscovers a past whose splendor and sophistication is only now being realized, and whose story has for too long remained untold. Emmy-award winning cinematographers and Academy Award nominated animators bring to life towering pyramids, sprawling empires, and incredible indigenous legends. NATIVE AMERICA reveals a unifying belief that inspires these diverse cultures – people are deeply connected to earth, sky, water, and all living things. This belief is rooted in millennia of living on this land and continues to resonate in the lives of Native Americans to this day.

Discover the cosmological secrets behind America’s ancient cities. Scientists explore some of the world’s largest pyramids and 3D-scan a lost city of monumental mounds on the Mississippi River; native elders reveal ancient powers of the sky.

Airs on WXXI-TV November 13, 2018 at 9:00 pm
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leads viewers on an exploration of how and why people spend, save (or don’t), and think about money. The United States is heading into a retirement crisis, led by debt-ridden Baby Boomers whose diminishing savings will not match their increasing longevity. To help Americans address this challenge, host David Coyne – a Washington, D.C.-based actor and comedian – travels the country and meets original thinkers mixing economics with psychology. Their enlightening and often amusing experiments into financial behavior illuminate how both the human brain and the marketplace can trick people into spending money.

Airs on WXXI-TV November 13, 2018 at 1:00 am
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Meet some of the people that Silicon Valley leaders like Facebook and Google hire to do “digital cleaning.” Mostly located in the Philippines, these “content moderators” delete “inappropriate” content on the net, thereby influencing what people around the world see and think. The Cleaners charts social media’s evolution from a shared vision of a global village to a dangerous web of fake news, extremism, and radicalization.

Airs on WXXI-TV November 12, 2018 at 10:00 pm
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On July 18, 1965, U.S. Navy Commander Jeremiah Denton took off from the aircraft carrier USS Independence leading a 28-plane mission over the city of Thanh Hoa in North Vietnam. Denton’s plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire during the attack, and for the next eight long years, he would battle the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton. As the senior American officer at the prison, Denton was forced by the North Vietnamese to participate in a press conference and told he must say the POWs were being treated well. Looking haggard, weak and beaten from the severe punishment he had undergone, Denton took advantage of that opportunity however, to send a secret message home, blinking out the letters T-O-R-T-U-R-E in Morse code.

In this new APT original film, JEREMIAH, family, friends, and fellow POWs help tell the story of this American hero who led the way for prisoners in Hanoi and returned from Vietnam to become a U.S. Senator from Alabama. Six of Denton’s children are interviewed: Jeremiah III, James, Don, Mike, Mary and Madeleine. Robert Shumaker, James Mulligan and George Coker were part of the Alcatraz Eleven, a group of hardline resistors including Denton that the Vietnamese removed from the Hanoi Hilton and sent to a worse prison that the POW’s named Alcatraz. Other interviewees include Senate staffer Joel Lisker, who worked for Denton; Alvin Townley, author of Defiant; and Heath Hardige Lee, who is writing a history of the POW wives and the POW/MIA movement.

JEREMIAH also tells the story of what was happening back home to Denton’s wife, Jane, and their seven children, who wondered if he would ever return as they faced the turbulent social changes of the 1960’s. Jane Denton managed to overcome her grief at her husband’s imprisonment by becoming an activist and helping to start the POW/MIA Movement which was partially responsible for the Vietnamese ending their program of torture. JEREMIAH explores the power of faith in unbelievable circumstances, and the qualities of leadership Jeremiah Denton brought to the difficult task of guiding fellow POWs to survive years of imprisonment and torture. In the end, it leaves no doubt that Denton was “a hero among heroes.”

Airs on WXXI-World November 12, 2018 at 9:00 pm
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This documentary is based on the sensational 1926 novel by World War I aviator Elliott White Springs of South Carolina. When the novel War Birds was published in 1926, its frank depiction of the profligate lifestyle of pilots scandalized America and became the inspiration for movies such as The Dawn Patrol and Wings. It tells the story of three young Southerners who join the British Royal Air Force in 1917 and become known as the Three Musketeers for their high-spirited ways. But the adventure of flying is soon tempered by the realization that they have joined a dangerous profession; in this, the dawn of aviation when airplanes are both flammable and unsafe, a majority of pilots will die. The film contains extensive documentary footage of World War I, images of pilot training in the U.S. and Britain as well as interviews with descendants of Springs and Grider and excerpts from an interview with Larry Callahan in 1968. The film is narrated by Joe Morton with Matt Bomer and Fred Weller as the voices of Mac Grider and Elliott Springs, reading selected passages from the novel. The film was produced and directed by Robert Clem, whose films include IDA award-winning Big Jim Folsom: The Two Faces of Populism, Company K and the current festival hit How They Got Over: Gospel Quartets and the Road to Rock and Roll.

Airs on WXXI-World November 10, 2018 at 6:00 pm
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On a freezing winter night in February 1945, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division accomplished the impossible: they scaled a 2,000-foot cliff in northern Italy to knock the seemingly invincible Germans from their impenetrable perch. THE LAST RIDGE recounts the remarkable story of the legendary 10th Mountain Division, whose extraordinary efforts turned the tide for the Allied forces in Italy, revolutionized winter mountain warfare abroad, transformed winter sports and inspired an entire generation of soldiers. Narrated by National Public Radio’s Scott Simon, the documentary traces the 10th Mountain Division’s history: from their uphill battles in World War II to their current campaigns in troubled Afghanistan.

Airs on WXXI-World November 10, 2018 at 4:00 pm
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Narrated by actor Jason Beghe of NBC’s Chicago P.D.,SURVIVORS OF MALMEDY: DECEMBER 1944 tells the story of the World War II massacre of 84 American soldiers in Belgium during the opening days of the famous “Battle of the Bulge.” On December 17, 1944, after a short battle, more than 130 American GIs were taken prisoner just outside the Belgian town of Malmedy and herded into a field by an infamous German SS division led by one of the Nazi’s most brutal commanders. The unarmed American prisoners were gunned down. Those still alive after the initial shooting in the brutal cold were killed by SS soldiers ordered into the field to execute any Americans still breathing. Some American soldiers played dead. Some ran. Some escaped to nearby houses. In the end, more than 50 Americans did escape the infamous Malmedy Massacre. Today, just a handful remain. Weaving interviews with the few remaining survivors of the massacre with archival footage, and drone video shot in the Malmedy area and in the field where the infamous event occurred, the emotional and powerful SURVIVORS OF MALMEDY chronicles what became known as the largest single mass murder of American troops in World War II.

Airs on WXXI-World November 10, 2018 at 3:00 pm
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This program tells the true story of American G.I.s — many of whom would go on to have illustrious careers in art, design and fashion –who tricked the enemy with rubber tanks, sound effects and visual illusions during the World War II. The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops staged a traveling road show of deception designed to con the Germans right on the front lines. From Normandy to the Rhine, they conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Every move they made was top secret and their story was hushed up for decades after the war’s end. Many of the men chosen to carry out these deceptions were young artists recruited from art schools across the country. In their spare time, they painted and sketched their way across Europe, creating a unique and moving visual record of their war. Some would go on to become famous, including fashion designer Bill Blass, painter Ellsworth Kelley and photographer Art Kane. This documentary features interviews with 19 Ghost Army veterans, as well as retired general Wesley Clark and other military historians.

Airs on WXXI-World November 8, 2018 at 9:00 pm
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During the darkest hour of World War II, a team of idealistic filmmakers hoped the power of the movies could reshape the world. As Allied forces liberated Western Europe, their military campaign was accompanied by a vast propaganda effort that centered around 26 short documentaries about American life targeted at the newly liberated populations. PROJECTIONS OF AMERICA: MOVIES IN WARTIME is an engaging documentary that weaves interviews with filmmakers, audience members, and film critics with excerpts from a number of the “Projections of America” films. These theatrical shorts presented American stories of cowboys and oilmen, farmers and window washers, immigrants and school children – capturing both the optimism and the messiness of American democracy.

Airs on WXXI-World November 8, 2018 at 6:00 pm
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