First Daughter and the Black Snake

A powerful set of stories of “righteous persons” taking action along the U.S.-Mexico border, motivated by moral conviction and compassion. "Borderland" shows how courageous actions can lead to political mobilization and the defense of human rights in the face of hate and discrimination.

"Mother Tongue" chronicles the first time a documentary film about Guatemalan genocide in Guatemala was translated and dubbed into Maya-Ixil—5.5% of whom were killed during the armed conflict in the 1980s. Told from the perspective of Matilde Terraza, an emerging Ixil leader and the translation project’s coordinator, "Mother Tongue" illuminates the Ixil community’s ongoing work to preserve collective memory.

RESIST; The Unist'oten's Call to the Land is a short documentary that was filmed in the summer of 2013 on unceded Wet'suwet'en territory, 1000 km north of Vancouver in northern BC (western Canada) over the duration of the fourth annual Environmental Action Camp, hosted by the Unist’ot’en (C'ihlts'ehkhyu/Big Frog) Clan. The focus of the film is on the Camp as a year-round resistance to exploitative industry, and what it represents in relation to indigenous sovereignty and the environmental, legal, and social issues surrounding pipeline projects in British Columbia. The film documents one of the most important resistance camps in North America at the time.

A documentary that chronicles Pras Michel's 9-day experience as a homeless man in downtown Los Angeles. Given a dollar a day to live, his worldview is shattered as he sees firsthand the fight for survival on the violent streets.

​​American Vagabond is a documentary film about runaway queer youth living in the shadows of the promised city.

On the 11th Annual National Day of Silence, Erin Davies was victim to a hate crime in Albany, New York. Because of sporting a rainbow sticker on her VW Beetle, Erin's car was vandalized, left with the words "fag" and "u r gay" placed on the driver's side window and hood of her car. Despite initial shock and embarrassment, Erin decided to embrace what happened by leaving the graffiti on her car. She took her car, now known worldwide as the "fagbug," on a 58-day trip around the United States and Canada. Along the way, Erin discovered other, more serious hate crimes, had people attempt to remove the graffiti, and experimented with having a male drive her car. After driving the fagbug for one year, Erin decided to give her car a makeover.

Do you remember the last time you've talked to your parents? What did you talk about? Have you gone step further from weather forecast and daily politics? Five years after last gathering, a birthday celebration brings together an ordinary four member family. They start questioning what made them turn away from each other... Can having a conversation about buried family secrets help them eat without cramps in the stomach in the future? Can a failed birthday cake help them overcome the past? Through the ritual of family meals, the film tells how important is for us to feel accepted by our loved ones.

Documentary produced for the We Are Water Foundation, on the ecological disaster of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Aral was just 50 years ago, the fourth largest lake in the world, with 66,000 square kilometers. Today is a vast desert with skeletons of boats stranded on the sand.

A performance artist works tirelessly to fulfill her dream of adopting Sudanese twins, placing her marriage and career at risk in this documentary.

Whatever happened to this promising young actress from Hollywood? A search for "the woman in the car" through the never-ending suburbia of Los Angeles, where the myth of cinema reigns. A sort of thriller without a corpse.

Digital Nation is a new, open source PBS project that explores what it means to be human in an entirely new world - a digital world. It consists of this Web site as well as a major FRONTLINE documentary to be broadcast on Feb. 2, 2010. Our production team is posting rough cuts and raw footage on the web, and gathering input, feedback and stories from users as we go.