P.O.V.

Girltalk is Kate Davis' heartbreaking yet hopeful portrait of three runaway girls with histories of abuse and neglect. The juvenile courts are after Pinky, a Puerto Rican girl who refuses to go to school. Mars, on the streets since age 13, now works as a stripper. Martha, who has lived in a dozen foster homes, now confronts teenage motherhood. Music, humor, and intimate conversations play against the disturbing reality of these girls' lives.

On a hot summer night in Detroit, Ronald Ebens, an autoworker, killed a young Chinese-American engineer with a baseball bat. Although he confessed, he never spent a day in jail. This gripping Academy Award-nominated film relentlessly probes the implications of the murder in the streets of Detroit, for the families of those involved, and for the American justice system.

Coming Out reveals that the debutante tradition is alive and well. Follow Miss Mary Stuart Montague Price, founder and chairman (sic) of the annual Debutante Cotillion in Washington, DC, through the meticulously planned ritual where networking and meeting people who can help you later are as important to todays debs as the style of the gown or the height of the escort.

In Wise Guys!, a stamp dealer from Los Angeles, a former school teacher form Miami, a born again Christian from Las Vegas and a whiz kid law student square off in the Jeopardy! $100,000 Tournament of Champions. David Hartwell's fast-paced, sometimes poignant film is a peek behind the scenes and into the fact-filled minds of contestants in one of America's favorite game shows.

Watching The Family Album is like coming across a long-lost box of family photos: it's enchanting, humorous and sometimes even eerie. Director Alan Berliner spent years blending home movies and tape recordings collected from 60 different American families to assemble a composite lifetime which moves from childhood to adulthood, from innocence to experience.

The Bomb is killing ordinary Americans, even in the absence of a nuclear war. That's the thesis of this chilling — but ultimately hopeful — film which explores in evocative, personal and immediate terms how all of us have been affected by the nuclear age. Denounced by officials and shunned by broadcasters when it was first released, many of the issues it raised have become today's front page headlines.

David Sutherland's bold and unconventional film portrait reveals one of America's leading Social Realist painters doing what he does best: skewering corrupt politicians, raging over social injustices, and satirizing the petty foibles of humankind.

On the streets and subways of New York, 101 itinerant performers whirl firesticks, mimic passers-by, imitate Stevie Wonder, tap dance and perform classical music. Karen Goodman's No Applause, Just Throw Money is a delightful mixture of music and magic moments, celebrating some joyful encounters in New York City streets.

This riveting film recounts the untold story of a handful of Jewish youth who organized an underground resistance against the Nazis in the Lithuanian ghetto of Vilna.

Moved by the growing desperation of thousands of laid-off steel workers, a group of ministers in Pittsburgh begins to confront the city's government and powerful corporations. Their passionate, controversial and unorthodox actions lead to profound soul-searching, Church rejection and imprisonment.

In Binge, videomaker Lynn Hershman places herself center-screen for an intimate, humorous and piercing narrative about her efforts to control her weight

For more than a hundred years cowboys have written with feeling about the life and land they love. Kim Shelton's Cowboy Poets is a fascinating portrait of several contemporary poet lariats who keep that tradition alive — even on the Johnny Carson show.

In Doug And Mike, Mike And Doug, Cindy Kleine probes the inner and outer lives of identical twins Doug and Mike Starn, whose collaborative painting and photographic work is rapidly gaining acclaim in the art world.

A uniquely powerful and intimate look at the lives and struggles of a group of homeless people who've been moved into an "urban campground" in Los Angeles. Made by Tom Seidman with the help of a crew that included camp "residents," Lost Angeles graphically and unsentimentally portrays the complicated realities of life on the streets.