Episode 1
Through the Wire
June 26, 1990
An underground, high-security isolation unit at the Federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky, was built to house three female inmates convicted of politically motivated crimes. An international campaign advocates closing the controversial unit on humanitarian grounds.
Episode 2
Metamorphosis: Man Into Woman
July 3, 1990
Gary, a 39 year-old successful animation artist and devout Christian, is pursuing a lifelong dream — to become a woman. A candid, non-sensational and sometimes humorous journey of nearly three years during which Gary prepares physically and emotionally for sex reassignment surgery, the film raises provocative questions about what really makes us men and women.
Episode 3
Larry Wright
July 10, 1990
With a subway platform as his stage and a plastic can as his instrument, 14-year-old Larry Wright is a self-taught drummer with astonishing talent. A rousing tribute to the Harlem youth and the rich culture of the urban streets.
Episode 4
On Ice
July 10, 1990
Cryonics — the freezing of human beings after death for future revival — is the focus of this off-beat film by two science buffs-turned-film-majors. Alternately deadpan and dead serious, the film features commentary from Timothy Leary, a theologian, and skeptical scientists.
Episode 5
Salesman
July 24, 1990
In its national broadcast premiere, this bittersweet classic from pioneering filmmakers follows four door-to-door Bible salesmen as they walk the line between hype and despair. The critics used all the superlatives on this one, and it's as fresh today as when it was originally released.
Episode 6
Police Chiefs
July 31, 1990
Three big-city police chiefs reveal sharply differing philosophies of law enforcement. Daryl Gates introduced SWAT to Los Angeles. Anthony Bouza ruffled feathers in Minneapolis. Lee Brown recently left Houston for New York. These top cops' ideas about the causes and cures of crime are as varied as their personalities.
Episode 7
Kamala and Raji
August 7, 1990
Two poor women in India attempt to improve their lives. Kamala and Raji's resourcefulness, aspirations, and capacity for joy shatter stereotypes of Indian women as voiceless figures leading desolate lives of abject poverty. They have joined a growing organization of street vendors and laborers; the husbands and wholesalers of Ahmedabad may never be the same.
Episode 8
Days of Waiting
August 15, 1990
Artist Estelle Peck Ishigo went with her Japanese American husband into an internment camp during World War II, one of the few Caucasians to do so. An "outsider's" perspective on the shattering experience of relocation is vividly recreated from Ishigo's own memoirs, photos, and paintings.
Episode 9
Golub
August 14, 1990
The role of art in America has been debated everywhere from the Halls of Congress to the local shopping mall. More than a portrait of the socially committed painter Leon Golub, whose massive canvases are intended to provoke viewers, this film is about media and contemporary society, social responsibility and creativity, art and information.
Episode 10
Green Streets
August 21, 1990
If a tree can grow in Brooklyn, can an eggplant flourish in the Bronx? Community gardens in New York City have helped to nourish neighborhood pride, racial tolerance, and a budding sense of hope for hundreds of enthusiastic gardeners in the urban jungle.
Episode 11
Going Up
August 21, 1990
The creation of a skyscraper is transformed into a breathtaking visual experience as time-lapse photography, hard hat banter and construction worker choreography are set to a score by 15 new music composers in an urban ballet forty stories above New York harbor.
Episode 12
Motel
August 28, 1990
Behind the faded signs of three motels in the American Southwest lay entire worlds of passion, loyalty, adventure and fate. Veteran filmmaker Christian Blackwood winds his way into the soul of remarkable people in uniquely American subculture.
Episode 13
Ossian: American Boy, Tibetan Monk
September 4, 1990
Ossian Maclise is not an average American teenager. Born in Massachusetts, he has been living in a Tibetan Buddhist monastery since the age of four. At seven, his monastic order recognized Ossian as a tulku — a reincarnation of a high Tibetan lama. Ossian offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of a young man who embodies a surprising meeting of Eastern and Western culture.
Episode 14
¡Teatro!
September 4, 1990
Founded by a Jesuit priest from St. Louis, a grassroots theatre company takes its shows on the unpaved roads of Honduras to enlighten and inspire villagers in the impoverished countryside.
Episode 15
People Power
September 11, 1990
After years of witnessing firsthand the horrors of guerrilla wars, Israeli-born producer Ilan Ziv traveled to Chile, the Philippines and the West Bank to explore the development of "People Power" and to reexamine his own long-held belief in the necessary evil of violence to overthrow repressive governments. Set against the background of a predominantly nonviolent transformation of Eastern Europe, this is the first film to examine and evaluate nonviolence as an effective strategy for political change.
Episode 16
Letter to the Next Generation
July 17, 1990
Are college students today apathetic and self-centered? Twenty years after National Guardsmen opened fire on student antiwar demonstrators, Jim Klein, a '60s radical-turned-filmmaker (Union Maids, Seeing Red) visits the campus of Kent State to probe behind the stereotypes. Together with young patrons of the local tanning salon, activists-turned-professors, and an ROTC captain, Klein ponders the social forces that are changing campuses and the country in the '90s.
