Award-winning doc strand ‘America ReFramed’ will return for its 10th season in early 2022 with the premiere of Fannie Lou Hamer’s America, a profile of the Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist. The film is a coproduction of World Channel and American Documentary.
The film will screen on PBS on Tuesday, February 22, and will have a follow-on broadcast on World Channel two days later. It will be available on digital outlets following that.
Fannie Lou Hamer’s America is produced by Hamer’s great-niece, Monica Land, and Selena Lauterer, and is directed by Joy Davenport. It is a co-presentation with PBS and Black Public Media.
Since 2012, ‘America ReFramed’ has premiered 170 films from more than 370 filmmakers, including works from established directors such as Shola Lynch, Deann Borshay Liem and Marshall Curry, and has featured the broadcast debuts of Nicholas Bruckman, Ursula Liang and PJ Raval.
More than half of those docs were helmed by female filmmakers and a third credited to BIPOC filmmakers. The series has highlighted the stories of the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, veterans, seniors, immigrants and people from a myriad of backgrounds.
Other confirmed titles for this latest series explore mental health, substance use, refugee experiences (For the Love of Rutland from Jennifer Maytorena Taylor) and trans-racial adoption (Daughter of a Lost Bird from Brooke Pepion Swaney and Geographies of Kinship from Deann Borshay Liem), with community spotlights on the saltwater Geechee of Georgia’s Sapelo Island (Sapelo from Nick Brandestini and Taylor Segrest) and intergenerational perspectives on San Francisco’s Chinatown (Chinatown Rising from Harry Chuck and Josh Chuck).