Reel South Documentary Series

Four years after the historic enrollment of James Meredith, student activists at the University of Mississippi devise a plan to defy a speaker-ban in 1966 by inviting Robert F. Kennedy...

A small Cajun town in rural Louisiana holds an annual exhibition football game between the majority-Black public school and majority-White private school, called the Tee Cotton Bowl. This meditative small...

A jovial love letter to the game of golf, told by the Black golfers who, despite segregation and racist systems, built a vibrant culture and lasting community on a municipal...

Season 6 of Reel South tackles this moment in American life with nuance and camaraderie. This collection of films finds common ground through ritual and participation, with stories that face...

Brandi Jarrow, a 27-year old trans woman of color from New Orleans, takes the personal and professional success she has achieved as a hairstylist, and works to open an inclusive...

In 1965, Francois Poupart and his wife immigrated from Bordeaux, France to Lafayette, Louisiana in search of a better life. They settled there finding themselves feeling at home because of...

In a buttoned-up city like DC, what happens when drag queens go rogue? LIPSTICK AND LEATHER explores the “alt-drag” community in the nation’s capital, and across the east coast.

Drag...

Some people collect baseball cards or coins. For Kent Westbrook, he actively collects tools, bowls, pots, and more made in Arkansas. His simple hobby spans over 65 years and slowly...

Darrouzett, Texas is a tiny, 100-year-old homesteaded community that represents an often overlooked population: elderly Americans living in rural places. It also represents a phenomenon happening all over the United...

Coup d'Etat Math is an animated short that depicts four stories that speak to the complex equation of each immigrant’s journey. Purposely ambiguous in place and time, each story builds...

Nearly 30,000 quilters descend upon Paducah, Kentucky, every year for its huge quilt competition, doubling the town’s population. “The Academy Awards of quilting” is a week-long spectacle in which quilters...

Tre Singleton spends an average of thirty hours a week mentoring a group of young Black men in Savannah, Georgia where he exposes them to other mentors and new skill...

This is the story of a superstar athlete and why the sports industry hasn't put her on your radar. AJ Andrews is the first woman to win a Rawlings Gold...

Set atop Sand Mountain, Alabama, SOME MILLION MILES presents a meditation on loss and the search for redemption amid a rural landscape of abundant beauty and deep poverty. Through a...

In the wake of a community tragedy, Sidney Brodie begins the Durham Homicide and Memorial Quilt. Every time someone is killed in Durham, he adds their name. But as Sidney...

Uniontown weaves together the unheard individual narratives of grassroots organizers in Uniontown, Alabama, as they fight to take back the town from the hands of industrial polluters and complacent politicians...

Following the haves and the have-nots during Kentucky Derby weekend, The Derby explores unseen sides of Kentucky’s biggest sporting event. From an anonymous reveler on Millionaires Row, to Guatemalan equine...

Cotton Plant, Arkansas grapples with steep and steady decline. Drowning in debt and immense population loss, the town faces a harsh reality: grow, or die. Mayor Willard C. Ryland, a...

A short documentary about the continued vandalism of the signs commemorating Emmett Till’s death after they were put up in 2007. These signs, erected by the Emmett Till Memorial Commission...

Decades of oil and gas infrastructure projects in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin have recklessly altered the flow of water across the wetland, forcing crawfishermen working in the Basin to ask hard...

Father Roy Snipes has lived in Texas his whole life and seen it all, especially along the Mexico border. He has dedicated his life to the oblates and keeping religion...

Illustrated scenes and archival footage of 1970's pop-culture animate Arthur Bremer’s diary entry planning the assassination of former Alabama governor George Wallace during his 1972 presidential campaign.

On seven Saturdays each fall, a tranquil South Carolina town, becomes a college football metropolis. Its heart is Howard’s Rock. Players rub it for luck before entering Clemson Memorial Stadium...

High school student and poet, Chasity Hunter, experienced intense flooding in her New Orleans neighborhood during both Hurricane Katrina and recent summer rainstorms. Inspired to find out how safe her...

In the uphill battle against fishing regulations, a changing climate, and their own geographical isolation, multiple generations of the residents of Atlantic, NC tell stories about their home and its...

The first time LaBrelah was on a horse she was eight months old. Today, she is an accomplished barrel racer in Southern rodeo circuits. With her family’s unending support, this...

May 25, 2020 - As a centuries-old black community in Louisiana, contaminated and uprooted by petrochemical plants, comes to terms with the loss of its ancestral home, one man standing in...

May 18, 2020 - The Clinton, Mississippi High School Attaché Show Choir is considered to be among the most successful in history. In a region where arts and music funding...

May 11, 2020 - At 84, folk music pioneer Alice Gerrard performs, teaches, and inspires the next generation while safeguarding groundbreaking moments of her past.

Directed by: Kenny Dalsheimer

May 4, 2020 - In 1979, a fatal shooting ignites a maelstrom of hostilities against Vietnamese refugee fishermen along the Gulf Coast. Set during the early days of Vietnamese refugee...

April 27, 2020 - Henrietta Boggs, a reluctant Southern belle, finds her way to Central America in the 1940s, in search of freedom and adventure. Instead, she is swept up...

LGBTQ West Virginians fight to live free from discrimination, calling us to reimagine the power and longevity of a small town queer community.

Directed by: Emily Harger

April 20, 2020 - The story of the Charleston Gazette-Mail, a family-owned, Pulitzer Prize-winning local newspaper in West Virginia fighting for survival.

Directed by: Gabriela Cavanagh

April 13, 2020 - After a contentious race, the 2017 runoff for mayor of New Orleans came down to two candidates: Desirée Charbonnet and LaToya Cantrell, two very different black women...

April 13, 2020 - Much of America’s rich history is being lost to time. In the South, vast amounts of African-American gravesites and burial grounds for enslaved persons have been...

April 6, 2020 - F11 and Be There is a commentary on American civil rights, race, social justice, and art, told through the many lenses of legendary Life and Magnum...

Season 5 coming to PBS Spring 2020. Preview Season 5 and ask the question: What Defines You?

Set during the height of the civil rights movement, a band of blues hounds traveled to the Deep South to find two forgotten blues singers. Finding them would not be...

The Glover family invites an indigenous activist group to start a protest camp on their land in West Texas. Roughly 20 miles north of the US-Mexico Border, the Two Rivers...

Life for a Latinx immigrant family in the New South can be challenging and sometimes terrifying, but thankfully, there’s always a fiesta to take you through the night. Three Latina girls...

Thousands of Chinese students arrive in the United States each year, often confronting loneliness and culture-clash upon arrival. Arriving in North Carolina to study filmmaking, Hao Zhang is surprised to...

After 25 years of living in the United States, Guatemalan grandmother Juana Ortega is threatened with deportation and soon takes sanctuary in a small North Carolina church. As time passes...

In a fading Georgia town, a community recalls its dark past and faces a grim present. An undocumented immigrant, caught in legal limbo and facing deportation, contemplates his future. In...

Growing up in rural South Carolina, celebrated American garden designer Ryan Gainey developed a love of plants at an early age. After moving to Atlanta in the 1970s, Ryan began...

A successful fashion designer who gave up her big-city career, Ingrid Gipson discovered a reclusive life of solitude and unhindered creativity in Arkansas’ rural Ouachita Mountains. As if through poetry...

Captain Chris Scott rallies a colony of tent residents to defend their provisional homes against the forces of gentrification. As development encroaches on the community, the tragedies and personal experiences...