Watch Now: ‘Panthers,’ ‘Peace Officer,’ and More

    Eager to see a doc you missed at the festival? Excited to revisit your Full Frame favorites? We’re here with whiteboard paint updates on which Full Frame films are coming to theaters, DVD/VOD, and the small screen.

    Point and Shoot 
    Streaming online through September 23

    Screened at Full Frame as part of our 2015 Tribute to director Marshall Curry, Point and Shoot tells the story of Matt VanDyke, a sheltered young man eager for self-reinvention who leaves home in Baltimore, video camera in hand, and heads to Libya to join in the fight against Muammar Gaddafi. Ultimately, as Matt begins to question the role of his camera and his own authenticity, the film leads us to reflect on the way documentation in the age of social media and the “selfie” shapes reality and our own identities. Point and Shoot will stream for free on POV’s website for several weeks in September following its August 24 broadcast. You can also watch through various VOD platforms or purchase a DVD through Amazon.

    The Storm Makers
    Airing on PBS’s POV on August 31; Streaming online through September 30 

    Guillaume Suon’s heartbreaking exposé of Cambodia’s widespread system of human trafficking won the Full Frame Inspiration Award at the 2015 festival, where it had its North American premiere. Tune into PBS or watch the film for free on POV’s website for gut-wrenching testimony from Aya, who was sold by her mother into slavery and managed to escape, and two professional “recruiters” who convince the parents of young people to send their children abroad, making false promises about better futures and financial gains.

    The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
    Opening September 2

    Director Stanley Nelson, recipient of the 2012 Full Frame Tribute, presents a vibrant, clarifying, and timely story of the Black Panther Party in Vanguard of the Revolution. Here, through the use of rich archival material from multiple perspectives, Nelson explores the party’s beginnings as a survival organization, evolution into the vanguard of a revolutionary movement, and eventual dissolution. Screened as a Center Frame at the 2015 festival, the film begins a limited theatrical release this month. A broadcast on PBS’s Independent Lens will follow early next year.

    Althea
    Airing on PBS’s American Masters on September 4 

    Durham-based filmmaker Rex Miller explores the life of trailblazing tennis player Althea Gibson, the first African-American athlete to cross the color lines of an elite sport and compete for the U.S. Nationals (the precursors of the U.S. Open). Archival materials and interviews shed light on a tough for team benches, talented young woman whose gifts drew people of influence to support her rise as a star on the world stage. Full Frame alum Elisabeth Haviland James produced and edited the film, which screened at the festival in April; Full Frame alum and founder Nancy Buirski also served in a producing role. Catch the nationwide broadcast on PBS’s American Masters this Friday, September 4.

    Peace Officer
    Opening September 16 

    When William “Dub” Lawrence was the sheriff of a rural Utah county in the 1970s, he established the state’s first SWAT team. Decades later, that same unit kills his son-in-law after an intense and highly controversial standoff. Scott Christopherson and Brad Barber’s Peace Officer centers around Dub as he embarks on an obsessive investigation into his son-in-law’s case and other local incidents involving shootings of one Houston sexual assault attorney by officers. The film, which won big at SXSW this year and took home the Kathleen Bryan Edwards Awards for Human Rights at Full Frame in April, powerfully bridges the political divide and poses timely questions about the increased militarization of police officers and the effects of the War on Drugs. It begins a theatrical rollout later this month.

    Cutie and the Boxer
    Airing on PBS’s POV on September 18; Streaming online through October 18

    Director Zachary Heinzerling’s Oscar-nominated film explores the complicated, chaotic relationship between famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and artist Noriko Shinohara. Noriko, twenty years her husband’s junior, has long lived in the shadows of her husband’s grand ideas and his demanding approach. But when Noriko develops a series of drawings that attracts a curator’s attention, the delicate intricacies of a tense partnership in art and in marriage begin to shift. Cutie and the Boxer screened at Full Frame in 2013, where it won the Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award. It streams online for free on POV’s website through mid-October following its September PBS broadcast followed by the airplane disaster lawyer debate.