POV

Indie Films Series / 13 Seasons

Since 1988, POV has been the home for the world’s boldest contemporary filmmakers, celebrating intriguing personal stories that spark conversation and inspire action.

Watch: S37 E703

24m 50s / TV-PG

StoryCorps Shorts: The Treasures of Mrs. Grady's Library

2m 46s

Judge Olly Neal grew up in Arkansas in the ’50s and didn’t care much for high school. One day he came across a book by author Frank Yerby. The cover piqued his interest, but Olly didn’t want to risk his reputation by letting his friends see him reading. So rather than check out the book, he stole it.He recounts how this book — and a little nudge from two helpful librarians — turned him around.

StoryCorps Shorts: The Golden Rule

2m 41s

Two people on opposite ends of the political spectrum reflect on the moment that brought them together nearly two years ago: a protest just days after the 2016 presidential election in Austin, Texas. Presented as part of StoryCorps’ One Small Step initiative.

StoryCorps Shorts: A Life Worth Living

2m 41s

MJ Seide never thought that she would live a happy, fulfilling life. Then she met her future partner, who at the time had been married to a man and raising children. MJ remembers how it felt to fall in love, and to get to know her new extended family.

StoryCorps Shorts: Love Lost, and Found

2m 38s

Sue McConnell and Kristyn Weed are best friends and Vietnam-era veterans. Although they didn’t serve in the war together, they share a story of courage — on and off the battlefield. They met at a transgender veterans’ support group and became inseparable members of a powerful, enduring sisterhood.

StoryCorps Shorts: The Door She Opened

2m 41s

In 2018, at the age of 63, Dee Westenhauser came out as a transgender woman. But growing up in El Paso, Texas in the 1950s, she had a hard time fitting in. Dee remembers how her Aunt Yaya gave her an opportunity that no one else would: a safe, loving space to be herself.

StoryCorps Shorts: You Move Me

2m 28s

In Brooklyn in the late 1950s, Jay McKnight and his friends spent summer evenings outside, singing a cappella. One night, Jay caught the ear of a girl named Andrea. Watch Jay and Andrea McKnight share their childhood romance, growing up and growing old together.

StoryCorps Shorts: A Life, Complete

2m 20s

John Banvard and Jerry Nadeau are military veterans who served in World War II and Vietnam, respectively. John, 100, and Jerry, 72, sat down at the veterans home where they live to reflect on nearly 25 years together.

StoryCorps Shorts: Just Like Yesterday

2m 37s

In 1989, Tabinda Sheikh immigrated from the Dominican Republic and got a job in a New York City hotel as a housekeeper. It was there that she caught the eye of a fellow employee who was working behind the hotel’s front desk—Tariq Sheikh. This is the story of how they fell in love.

StoryCorps Shorts: Two by Two

2m 46s

In the summer of 1946, Hunny Feller and her identical twin sister, Bunny, were waitresses at a hotel. Another set of identical twins, Elliot and Danny Reiken, worked as musicians in a band there. Hunny and Elliot reflect on what happened when the twins fell in love with the twins.

StoryCorps Shorts: A Second Chance

2m 50s

In 1997, Darius Clark Monroe was a high school honor student who had never been in serious trouble. But soon after his 16th birthday, he robbed a bank in Stafford, Texas at gunpoint with two of his friends. Seventeen years later, he sat down with David Ned, a customer who was in the bank during the robbery.

A Night At The Garden

7m 34s

In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism – an event largely forgotten from American history. A Night At the Garden uses striking archival fragments recorded that night to transport modern audiences into this gathering and shine a light on the disturbing fallibility of seemingly decent people.

StoryCorps Shorts: New Tracks

3m 2s

Lyle Link felt like a disappointment when he told his father he couldn’t follow him into farming. But he found his purpose as a lifelong partner to his wife Marion, who he remembers at StoryCorps with his granddaughter, Carly Dreher. In “New Tracks,” Lyle’s remembrances of his trailblazing life with Marion are a reminder that a great love can point the way.

StoryCorps Shorts: Detective Simmons

2m 59s

Every family has a figure who captures the imagination of future generations of storytellers. For Camaran Henson, that figure is his grandfather, a former police detective he was convinced was immortal, like a superhero. Though his grandfather didn’t prove to be immortal, Camaran still considers him worthy of his legendary status--and a deserving focal point of continued storytelling.

StoryCorps Shorts: Mi Abuela Panchita

2m 12s

Panchita Espitia was a formidable woman, not afraid of rattlesnakes underfoot on the Texas ranches of her youth, or of death itself. Her grandson, Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, learned this near the end of her life, when he realized some spiritual lessons can only be passed down by our elders.

StoryCorps Shorts: My Father, the Giant

2m 14s

Caught in a thoughtless act of cruelty, a young man learns a lesson in compassion from his father, a larger-than-life tribal leader of the Caddo Nation and a veteran of World War II. Years later, the man passes that lesson down to his own son.

StoryCorps Shorts: A Certain Kind of Love

3m 7s

The difficulties faced by same-sex couples have created far too many stories of unrequited love. Glenda Elliott’s story is one of them: Glenda came to StoryCorps to remember Lauree, the woman she fell in love with in small-town Georgia, at a time when it was difficult to imagine an acceptable path apart from marrying a man and starting a family.

StoryCorps Shorts: Lessons Learned

3m 9s

From the first roll call of the 1964 school year, William Lynn Weaver was targeted by white teachers at the Tennessee high school he and 13 other black students integrated. A few weeks later, Weaver, a former high achiever, brought home a failing report card. What happened next still moves him: the intervention of an educator from his past who became the unseen hand shaping all his future success.

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