Helen Whitney

An examination of the effect of McCarthyism on two ordinary Americans. Interviews with Paul McCarty and his family describe the loss of his job in a Paducah, Kentucky power plant in 1953 when his loyalty was questioned; he lost job after job for over twenty years. Interview with Luella Mundel, the object of false accusations based on her unconventional views and actions. Interviews with colleagues, friends, and a historian recreate the dramatic trial which devastated Mundel personally.

We don’t know how. We don’t know when. But death comes for us all. To be human is to wrestle with this truth and with the great unanswered question: How do we live with death in our eye? We can deny, we can rail, we can challenge, we can accept. What is our story, and will it sustain us at the end? “Into the Night: Portraits of Life and Death,” a two-hour documentary, features men and women of uncommon eloquence and intelligence who are grappling with these questions. For them death is no longer an abstraction far off in the future, it is real. They come from all walks of life, all ages, dying and healthy, believers and unbelievers, well known and obscure. These are people who have been shocked into mortality and are forever changed. They have stories to tell, and we can listen and learn from them.

A teenager who tries to convince his town to farm without using pesticides finds many of the residents resistant to change.

A docudrama telling the true story of a young woman who learns she has contracted the AIDS virus after an encounter with a fellow student while in college.

Richard Avedon was one of the great geniuses of 20th century photography, famous for his fashion photography done for the likes of Vogue, Versace, and Armani, and equally famous for his black and white portraits of American people, both famous and unknown.

For many Americans, the most difficult questions about 9/11 were not about politics, military strategy or homeland security. They were questions about God, about evil and about the potential for darkness within religion itself. What was it we saw on Sept. 11? Was it the true face of evil? Was it the face of religion? And where, if one is a believer, was God on that tragic morning? A PBS Frontline special.

First Edition is a 1977 American short documentary film about the Baltimore Sun directed by Helen Whitney. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

American Masters is a PBS television series which produces biographies on enduring writers, musicians, visual and performing artists, dramatists, filmmakers, and others who have left an indelible impression on the cultural landscape of the United States.