REEL SOUTH

Series / 7 Seasons

REEL SOUTH is a PBS documentary series that showcases authentic stories which unearth the spirit of the South today. The series explores layers of Southern life across themes of social justice, cultural experience, environmental challenges, and more. REEL SOUTH aims to leverage our region’s rich storytelling tradition as a catalyst for positive change — in the American South and beyond.

8m 54s

A Decade of Reel South

2m

For all the wonders of the South — the food, the music, the people, the land — the collective heritage of the region is complicated, to say the least. But the ability to witness and understand that complexity and foster empathy is more important than ever. Which is why REEL SOUTH exists.

Cash Crop | Official Trailer

14s

In Southern Virginia, Black farmers like Cecil Shell balance their interests in honoring their tradition of tobacco farming against the onset of solar energy farms exploding across the region. Through Cecil, the film explores one rural county’s shifting economic interests and his own efforts to steward the community, including Black landowners, through changing times.

Boca Chica | Official Trailer

13s

Unrestricted access to beaches is a public right in Texas. But for the little known, magical, and untamed stretch of beach called Boca Chica, that right is curtailed when SpaceX takes flight. Boca Chica uncovers the mesmerizing beauty of this fragile coastline and the fight for free access for its longtime visitors whose memories and spirituality are rooted deep among the sandy shorelines.

Echoes of the Rio | Official Trailer

16s

One El Paso filmmaker calls on her Indigenous and Mexican ancestors to explore the cyclical starvation of the Rio Grande river and the human and inhumane factors contributing to the disappearance of its culture and bounty.

Mothertown | Official Trailer

13s

The site of the original settlement of the Cherokee, the Kituwah mound, was thought lost for centuries. In her moving retelling of the efforts to reclaim the tribe’s land, former Chief Joyce Dugan and fellow tribe members foreground the spiritual, emotional, and social impact of Kituwah’s legacy. This is the story of how the Cherokee finally took their “land back.”

I’m the Girl – The Story of a Photograph | Official Trailer

34s

In 1951, a little girl became mesmerized by a Christmas display window in downtown Louisville. A photo of her has remained iconic for over seventy years. To this day, the identity of this wide-eyed child remains unconfirmed, except among the dozens of women who claim to be her. 'I'm the Girl' investigates the power of a single image, what it means to be seen, and the magic of the Holiday season.

For the Record | Official Trailer

37s

In a small Texas Panhandle town, a few things have remained constant– cowboys, high school football, conservative voters, and the family-owned weekly newspaper, The Canadian Record. Publisher and editor Laurie Ezzell Brown strives to keep the town’s paper of record and her family’s legacy alive despite an oil bust, a global pandemic, and a growing mistrust for all media and her own liberal column.

Laurie Covers a Nursing Home Groundbreaking

1m 40s

Laurie Ezzell Brown, publisher and editor of the Canadian Record, covers the groundbreaking of a new nursing home and discusses the importance of keeping the weekly newspaper alive.

The Only Doctor | Official Trailer

1m

There is only one doctor in rural Clay County, Georgia, one of the state’s poorest and unhealthiest counties. After several years of working without pay, she can no longer volunteer full-time and faces the possibility of closing her clinic. Committed to her community, she seeks to continue serving her patients amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, dwindling support, and broken promises.

In Exile | Official Trailer

12s

In Springdale, Arkansas, migrants from the Marshall Islands gather to commemorate the 1946 bombing of Bikini Atoll and ask the questions: Why did the United States choose their islands and what are the ongoing impacts on their indigenous Pacific Island community? “In Exile” explores the nuclear legacy of the US in the Pacific and the lingering catastrophe in its wake.

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