Showing Movies, Making Change: P.O.V. at 20 Years

As film lovers, we tend to remember our significant film moments. One such moment for me was Elizabeth Barret's "Stranger with a Camera." In it, Barret revisits the 1967 murder of filmmaker Hugh O'Connor by a Kentucky local who was fed up with what he considered exploitation of people and poverty in his hometown. Barret, who grew up in Appalachia herself, uses her personal and regional history to explore the relationship between filmmaker and subject, with profound results. The story is at once personal to the filmmaker, and to me having grown up in West Virginia, while it also explores our nation's collective ambivalence and fascination with poverty and relationship to media. My experience with the film steered me toward a career in media because, like the staff of P.O.V. which aired the film in 2000, I whole-heartedly believe that media has power to change the way that we think and influence our actions. [Click here to read more]