Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.
Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story, directed by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason and written and produced by Jay-Z, re-examines the life and legacy of Trayvon Martin, whose death in 2012 became a catalyst for the Black Lives Matter movement. The six-episode series airs July 30-August 12 on Paramount Network and BET.
Whose Streets?, directed by Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis, makes its PBS premiere July 30 on POV. When unarmed teenager Michael Brown was killed by police on August 9, 2014, and left lying in the street for hours, it marked a breaking point for the residents of the St. Louis area and beyond. Whose Streets? is an unflinching look at the Ferguson, Missouri uprising. As the National Guard rolls in, a new generation mounts a powerful battle cry not just for their civil rights, but for the right to live. Whose Streets? is a Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund grantee.
Decades before Black Lives Matter galvanized the African-American community, the Black Power movement empowered a generation bent on revolution. This movement caught the attention of a group of Swedish journalists, who, from 1967-1975, travelled to the US to learn more. The footage of their stories later languished in boxes in the basement in Swedish Television until 2010, when filmmaker Goran Olsson discovered them. The resulting film, The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975, is a mashup of images, music and narration that chronicles the evolution of a movement. The film streams on Mubi.
Filmmaker Sandra Luckow made Sharp Edges 32 years ago, as her senior thesis at Yale. The doc features a teenage Tonya Harding training for her first National Figure Skating Championships. And once Tonya Harding rose to fame and then notoriety, that film would provide raw material for 60 Minutes, ESPN 30 for 30 and a number of other documentaries and news specials. And Sharp Edges would inspire actress Margot Robbie as she prepped for her star turn in the Academy Award-winning I, Tonya. And now, you can watch Sharp Edges on Hulu August 3.