Commentary : A Few Points of View Very Well Taken

Here comes trouble.

As in: Viewer, could we trouble you to use your brain?

As in: Gosh, I might have to go to the trouble of rethinking what I think.

That’s trouble, with a capital “T,” which rhymes with “P.O.V.,” which stands for “Point of View.”

“Very rarely do people look at a ‘P.O.V.’ film and shrug their shoulders and go about their business without giving what they’ve seen a second thought,” says Marc Weiss, who fathered this series of independent nonfiction films.

Back for its seventh summer season, “P.O.V.” means a welcome spot of trouble through mid-August on the PBS schedule (it airs in Los Angeles Tuesday nights).

This week, “P.O.V.” presents “Escape From China” by Chinese journalist Iris F. Kung (a pseudonym), who returns to her homeland to retrace the “underground railroad” that helped the last of China’s most-wanted Tian An Men Square leaders escape to freedom.

A week earlier, the series presented “One Nation Under God,” a film by Teodoro Maniaci and Francine Rzeznik that chronicles some of the all too many attempts to “cure” homosexuality--and examines why the church, the psychiatric community and other segments of society have pressured lesbians and gay men to “recover.”

“The fact that somebody is homosexual,” one “expert” intones in a clip from a 30-year-old documentary, “automatically rules out the possibility that he will remain happy for long.”

Assume for a moment this is true, responds a current-day gay man, who then ponders, “If someone was unhappy being tall, would those same people call for sawing off his legs?”

In the following weeks you can look forward to:

-- “The End of the Nightstick,” an expose that unravels a history of abuse of suspects by the Chicago police.

-- “Hearts of Darkness,” a behind-the-scenes look at Francis Ford Coppola’s mad struggle to finish his 1979 feature “Apocalypse Now” before it finished him.

-- “Dialogues With Madwomen,” by Academy Award winner Allie Light, in which she and six other women describe their experiences with manic depression and other mental disorders.

As should be clear by now, the films of “P.O.V.” (would the series be more aptly called “POINTS of View”?) are as varied and as personal as fingerprints.

What do they have in common? All have cleared the rigorous selection process “P.O.V” imposes on the more than 500 films submitted each year.

After 40 semifinalists are chosen by a committee of filmmakers and public TV programmers, Weiss huddles with his co-executive producer, Ellen Schneider, to identify the 10 that should air.

“We look for a mix,” Weiss says, “a good cross-section, some lighter, some more serious, with a variety of subjects, and a range of approaches--subjective to the more issue-oriented to slice-of-life.”

“There is no political litmus test,” Schneider adds. “ ‘P.O.V.’ has no ideological agenda.”

They must be doing something right. In its first six seasons, the series has won five Peabody Awards (known as broadcasting’s Pulitzer Prize), among other honors.

And while it doesn’t exactly go looking for trouble, “P.O.V.” has found it along the way, most notably three years ago with “Tongues Untied,” a vision of black gay life that ignited a firestorm.

Conservative legislators (without necessarily troubling themselves to see it) called the film pornographic and blasphemous.

“We knew it was a risky film,” Weiss explains, “but we also thought that if we didn’t put it on, there would really be no reason for the series to continue. It was important not to pull back and say, ‘This might be too hot to handle.’ ”

It wasn’t, and they didn’t, and, having weathered that storm, the hardy “P.O.V.” persists in challenging each viewer to re-examine his or her own P.O.V.

“It can be a transformative experience,” Weiss says. “People watching an hour or so of TV and then changing the way they think about something.”

Trouble, yes. But no problem.