Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Now streaming on Starz, RUTH—Justice Ginsburg in Her Own Words, from 2019 IDA Career Achievement Award honoree Freida Lee Mock, takes an intimate look at the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her inspiring rise to the highest court in the land. Along the way, the film explores through archival footage of Ginsburg herself, how she broke down barriers in her personal and professional life, and she became an iconic advocate for gender equality and women’s rights.
The world lost civil rights leader Vernon Jordan last week, and although we featured Dawn Porter’s Vernon Jordan: Make It Plain in an earlier Screen Time, it’s worth another mention. The film, streaming on PBS.org, explores Jordan’s rise from the segregated South, his tenure as the head of several civil rights organizations, and his position as a partner at a corporate law firm and financial behemoth Lazard.
Now streaming on WORLD Channel, Pandemic 19, from Yung Chang and Annie Katsura Rollins, captures the story of three doctors in the United States fighting COVID-19, told through their own voices while the chaos of the pandemic rages on outside the frame of their video confessions. In March 2020, as “shelter in place” orders began rolling out, the majority of the populace felt distanced from the opponent they were fighting...the virus was invisible and so was the frontline.
Now available on Amazon Prime, Underplayed, from Stacey Lee, focuses on the gender, ethnic and sexual inequality issues within the electronic music industry and the female DJs who have risen to the top in spite of it all.
Own the Room, from Cristina Constantini and Darren Foster, chronicles five students from different regions around the world as they take their budding business ventures to Macau, China, to compete in the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards. Santosh is from a small farming town in Nepal; Alondra workes for her family’s bakery in Puerto Rico; Henry is a programming whiz from Kenya; Jason is a marketing expert from Greece; and Daniela, having fled the crisis in Venezuela, is taking on the chemical industry from her lab at NYU. Own the Room premieres March 12 on Disney+
The new season of Pacific Pulse, an online series of short films produced by Pacific Islanders in Communications, commemorates Women's History Month with a new collection of six short films profiling top women filmmakers from the Hawaiian Islands.
Now streaming in virtual cinemas through Cinema Tropical, My Darling Supermarket, from Tali Yankelevich, takes viewers to a bright, colorful supermercado in São Paulo, Brazil, where store employees alternate between stocking shelves and contemplating their fears, hopes and questions about their place in the universe.