Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
In the IDA Award-winning series Making A Murderer, filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi followed, for over a decade, the twists and turns of the cases of Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, two Wisconsin men convicted of the brutal murder of photographer Teresa Halbach, uncovering along the way the possibility of a massive miscarriage of justice. The filmmakers are back for Making A Murderer Part 2, premiering October 19 on Netflix. Demos and Ricciardi have exclusive access to Avery and Dassey, their families and the legal teams fighting for justice on their behalf. As in the first 10 episodes, the filmmakers deftly balance the complicated legal machinations of these cases with the intimate personal stories of the people and families involved.
Now streaming on Film Struck/The Criterion Channel, and as part of Criterion's 100 Years of Olympic Films: 1912-2012, Visions of Eight is an omnibus take on the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Producer David Wolper enlisted the services of filmmakers Milos Foreman, Arthur Penn, Kon Ichikawa, Claude Lelouche, John Schlesinger, Mai Zetterling, Yuri Ozerov and Michael Pfleghar to bring their unique perspectives on, and interpretations of, the Games.
The Eugenics Crusade, which premieres October 16 on American Experience, tells the story of the unlikely—and largely unknown—movement from early 20th century America that turned the fledgling scientific theory of heredity into a powerful instrument of social control. Michelle Ferrari directs this troubling portrait of a country at once strange and eerily familiar.
Now streaming on Mubi through October 24, Ghost Town, from Zhao Dayong, tells the stories of a community of Lisu and Nu ethnic minorities living in a remote town in China’s southwest Yunnan province, on the border of Tibet and Burma. Once a vibrant county seat, the town of Zhiziluo has now been abandoned to local peasants.