Directors

If you're on Facebook, chances are tragic shootings and a hotly contested political climate have turned your social media feed into a forum for emotions, a place for sharing support, airing opinions and spreading lots and lots of misinformation.  On today’s show, how Buzzfeed aims to combat internet  hoaxes and fake news through their own tried and true method - an online quiz.

And this summer's hottest filming location - Nantucket?  We'll speak with New England director Jay Craven about shooting a historical film off the cape on a shoestring budget and college students as crew.

Donald Trump is praised as “authentic” because he speaks without a practiced politician’s filter.  Meanwhile, pundits knock Hillary Clinton for not putting on a good enough show of authenticity – so, what does that actually mean? And politics is not the only arena where the meaning of authenticity is open to interpretation - what about food? Today we take a look at the myth of authenticity – in politics…cooking…and the internet. Plus, forgery in the art industry is not rare - but a con artist who has been caught and never sent to jail is. We’ll speak to the directors of a film that looks inside the mind of the mischievous shut-in and skilled artist who donated masterful forgeries to more than 46 museums. 

Police shootings of unarmed black men and the deaths of African-Americans in police custody have prompted calls for a national conversation about racial inequality. So, what do well-meaning, privileged white people have to add? Today, the author of a new memoir urges white people to examine their privileged place in a stacked deck. Then, author and New Hampshire magazine editor Rick Broussard turns film director for Granite Orpheus, an experimental film project that sets the ancient myth of Orpheus against the torn-up streets of Concord.   

Earlier this year, an aspiring Czech politician traveled to a piece of disputed land wedged between Serbia and Croatia , stuck a flag in the earth and declared it a new country. Today we explore one man’s dream to create a libertarian utopia on 3-square miles of mosquito-infested marshland. Plus, the story of a lost thrill-seeker from Baltimore who crossed the Middle-East by motorcycle, joined the Libyan revolution, and captured it all on film. Plus, a tale of Cold War corn diplomacy. 

Despite having 94,000 miles of coastline and millions of acres of rivers, America imports 91% of its seafood. Today we explore the case for reviving the nation’s local fisheries. And, we’ll stay local with filmmaker Jay Craven, whose film Northern Borders is now on tour in New Hampshire. He tells us about the economics of regional filmmaking. Plus, word craft for fast times: a writing teacher celebrates the beauty and efficacy of writing short. 

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PBS is hosting an encore broadcast of the documentary The City Dark. The film, part of the POV series, will be airing on August 12. Last year we spoke with director Ian Cheney about light pollution and the development of the film. Here is our conversation with him after the debut of the documentary last summer.

In July of 2007, the sleepy suburban town of Cheshire, Connecticut woke up to a house set ablaze, three fatalities, one survivor, and two suspects caught fleeing the scene.  What had started as a home invasion and robbery had ended in rape, arson, and a triple homicide.  A new full-length documentary debuting on Monday, July 22nd on HBO explores how the Cheshire murders scarred the town, terrorized the survivors, and sparked public debate in a state poised to abolish capital punishment.  Kate Davis and David Heilbroner, who together produced and directed The Cheshire Murders, joined us to discuss their film.

In Santa Clarita, a town in southern California, there’s not much to do. The documentary feature Only the Young focuses on several teens who live there and follows them as they navigate growing up amongst the foreclosed homes and drained swimming pools that form the landscape of their youth. Only the Young premieres tonight as part of PBS’s POV series. Jason Tippet and Elizabeth Mims produced and directed the film, and Elizabeth Mims joined us from KUT in Austin. Also with us was Kevin Conway, one of the subjects of the film.

Brianna Hammon was in the second grade when she was first restrained and secluded, strapped into a bolted down chair, in a segregated classroom for physically disabled students.  Now in her late twenties, Brianna told her story with the help of a speech-generating device at the 2012 TASH Summit in Long Beach, California – one of five testimonies that were recorded for the new film “Restraint and Seclusion: Hear Our Stories”.  The film’s director is Dan Habib - former photo editor for the Concord Monitor, now filmmaker-in-residence at the institute on disability at the University of New Hampshire.