P.O.V.

PBS - P.O.V., Theresa Riley

Prototype Technology: GoldPocket, Synchronous TV

P.O.V., public television's award-winning showcase for independent documentary, presents passionate, powerful and poignant films. P.O.V. strengthens their already-considerable impact with a versatile two-screen synch-to-broadcast application that cultivates civic engagement as its core interactive feature. Viewers can use their computers to participate and share their responses as the story unfolds to complete the broadcast loop.

TWO TOWNS OF JASPER, the featured documentary, is scheduled to air on the evening of January 22, 2003. A unique cinematic approach documents a 1998 hate crime in Jasper, Texas, when James Byrd, Jr., a black man, was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to his death by three white men. Two film crews, one black and one white, set out to document the aftermath of the murder by following the subsequent trials of the local men charged with the crime, converging at the end to edit together the completed film. The enhanced prototype is accessible and sensitive to the digital divide. It addresses this explicit and troubling portrait of race in America with close-up information describing the characters and probing polls that seek to uncover answers to how and why a crime like this can happen in a modern society.

Credits: AFI: P.O.V.: GoldPocket Interactive: Georgia Tech: The Tobenkin Group: Delmar Media.NET: PLUSiTV: ARTiFACT