Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Starting tonight, Monday, August 14, POV will be streaming Whitney Dow and Marco Williams' Two Towns of Jasper, the 2003 film about a modern-day lynching. Two film crews, one black and one white, set out to document the aftermath of the murder of James Byrd, Jr. by following the subsequent trials of the local men charged with the crime.
Currently streaming on Netflix is Kasper Collin's I Called Him Morgan, an exploration of the relationship between jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan and his common-law wife Helen, who was implicated in his murder in 1972. Variety says the doc is "as much a visual and textural triumph as it is a gripping feat of reportage."
Currently streaming on Fandor is Lixin Fan's Last Train Home, an intimate observation of one fractured family that sheds light on the human cost of China's ascendance as an economic superpower. Thrillist called the 2009 film one of the best documentaries of all time.