POV Season 15, Episode 1: Hybrid

Refrigerator Mothers

It is America of the 1950s and 1960s, when a woman's most important contribution to society is generally considered to be her ability to raise happy, well-adjusted children. But for the mother whose child is diagnosed with autism, her life's purpose will soon become a twisted nightmare. Looking for help and support, she encounters instead a medical establishment that pins the blame for her child's bizarre behaviors on her supposedly frigid and detached mothering. Along with a heartbreaking label for her child, she receives a devastating label of her own. She is a "refrigerator mother". Refrigerator Mothers paints an intimate portrait of an entire generation of mothers, already laden with the challenge of raising profoundly disordered children, who lived for years under the dehumanizing shadow of professionally promoted "mother blame."

60 min

Fenceline: A Company Town Divided

How black and white populations in Norco, La., have responded to links between a refinery's activities and people's illnesses.

60 min

Sweet Old Song

Sweet Old Song is a 2002 documentary film directed by Leah Mahan.

60 min

Mai's America

A high school girl leaves Hanoi and comes to Mississippi.

60 min

Senorita Extraviada

Circumstances surrounding the discovery of the remains of more than 200 murdered girls in the desert around Juarez, Mexico.

60 min

Escuela

A Mexican-American migrant teenager's freshman year in high school and how she handled work, education and family life.

60 min

Afghanistan 1380

Surgeon Gino Strada and coordinator Kate Rowlands try to provide medical and humanitarian support to civilian victims of war in Afghanistan. (Dari, Italian and English with English subtitles)

60 min

Boomtown

60 min

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin is a 2003 documentary film written by Marc Weiss and directed by Nancy D. Kates and Bennett Singer.

60 min

Two Towns of Jasper

Two film crews document the aftermath of the murder of a black man by three white men in 1998 and the trials of the men charged with the crime.

60 min

Flag Wars

A black community in Columbus, Ohio, struggles with cultural and legal conflicts while experiencing urban renewal.

Larry v. Lockney

A farmer in Lockney, Texas, makes headlines after he refuses the school permission to test his son for drugs during random testing.