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Screen Time: Week of September 23

By Tom White


From Lauria Coyle's 'Adios Amor: The Search for Maria Moreno," which airs September 27 on PBS/'Voces.' Courtesy of George Ballis/Take Stock

Screen Time is your curated weekly guide to excellent documentaries and nonfiction programs that you can watch at home.

Buzz, premiering September 25 on HBO, follows Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Buzz Bissinger as he experiences a sexual awakening while collaborating with Caitlyn Jenner on her tell-all memoir. A verité portrait of his transformative journey, directed by his childhood friend Andrew Shea, Buzz follows the author as he simultaneously examines his own heteronormative constraints, exploring previously uncharted sexual desires in ways that test his marriage, family and sense of self. 

Now streaming on Kanopy, 306 Hollywood follows filmmakers and siblings Elan and Jonathan Bogarin as they undertake an archaeological excavation of their late grandmother's house. In their magical realism spin on their journey, 306 Hollywood delves into the nature of memory, time and history.

Premiering September 27 on PBS/Voces, Laurie Coyle's Adios Amor: The Search for Maria Moreno, traces, through the discovery of lost photographs, the story of Maria Moreno, a migrant mother of 12 who became the first female farm worker to be hired as a union organizer. Her activism predated Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers, but her tale was untold and her legacy unappreciated--until now.

Now available on Amazon Prime is Rahul Jain's Machines, which won the 2017 IDA Documentary Award for Best Cinematography. The film takes the viewer through the catacombs of a giant textile factory in Gujarat, India, where we meet the workers and feel their suffering and the environment they can hardly escape from. With strong visual language, memorable images and carefully selected interviews of the workers themselves, Jain tells a story of inequality, oppression and the huge divide between rich, poor and the perspectives of both.

The Criterion Channel presents Shorts for Days: Cityscapes, a collection of cinematic portraits of cities from such masters as DA Pennebaker, Chris Marker, Hollis Frampton and Jean Vigo, all of whom strives to capture the poetry and rhythm of the modern urban landscape.