Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
November is Native American Heritage Month, and WORLD Channel and Vision Maker Media are commemorating with a rich showcase of work from the Indigenous community, entitled We Are Still Here. Among the films in the showcase include Warrior Women, by Getting Real 2020 Programmer Christina D. King and Elizabeth Castle, which, through the stories of Indigenous rights activists Madonna Thunder Hawk and Marcy Gilbert, explores what it means to balance a movement with motherhood as the activist legacy is passed down from generation to generation in the face of a government that has continually met Native resistance with violence. Warrior Women airs November 13. And in honor of Veterans Day on November 11, WORLD Channel and Vision Maker Media will air Valeria Red-Horse Mohl and Gale Anne Hurd’s Choctaw Code Talkers, which tells the story of the Choctaw members of the US American Expeditionary Forces who were asked to use their Native language as a powerful tool against the German Forces in World War I. Also airing on Veteran’s Day is Leya Hale’s The People’s Protectors, in which four Native American veterans reflect on their experiences in the military during the Vietnam War and how their communities helped them carry their warrior legacy proudly.
Streaming on American Masters, N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear examines the enigmatic life and mind of National Medal of Arts-winner N. Scott Momaday, the Kiowa writer. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, House Made of Dawn, led to the breakthrough of Native American literature into the mainstream. Directed by fellow Kiowa Jeffrey Palmer.
POV Shorts continues its season this week with three films that embrace the theme of Legacy. Now Is the Time documents the 50th-anniversary celebration of the first modern-day totem pole of the Haida people of British Columbia Directed by Haida filmmaker Christopher Auchter. The Love Bugs, from Allison Otto and Maria Clinton, tells the story of renowned entomologists Lois and Charlie O’Brien, who traveled to more than 67 countries over a 60-year period, amassing the world’s largest private collection of insects. Life in Miniature, from Ellen Evans, profiles artist Kath Holden, who creates whimsical, yet keenly observed miniatures.
Premiering in virtual cinemas on November 11, Shalini Kantayya’s Coded Bias reveals the groundbreaking research of MIT researcher Joy Buolamwini, proving that facial recognition algorithms have the power to disseminate racial bias at scale. As a result, this past June, IBM, Amazon and Microsoft announced they would pause the sale of facial recognition to police.
Nathan Grossman’s I Am Greta, premiering November 13 on Hulu, tells the story of teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, from her one-person school strike for climate justice outside the Swedish Parliament, to her astonishing wind-powered voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to speak at the UN Climate Action Summit in New York City.
Premiering November 13 on AppleTV+, Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, from Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer, takes viewers on an extraordinary journey to discover how shooting stars, meteorites and deep impacts have focused the human imagination on other realms and worlds, and on our past and our future.