Grace convenes fellow filmmakers Cecilia Aldarondo, Marjan Safinia, and Michèle Stephenson (see full bios and links to films in episode show notes) for a conversation on something that’s sparked serious concern for all four of them in recent months: the elimination of many educational and curriculum materials accompanying their films on the PBS LearningMedia website.
As with all of our episodes this season, Grace and the VLU team aim to capture what’s happening in real time — to document for public awareness and, hopefully, catalyze further conversation and action among independent filmmakers, multimedia storytellers, and people working both in and beyond PBS.
Show Notes
Filmmaker bios
Cecilia Aldarondo is a director-producer from the Puerto Rican diaspora who works at the intersection of poetics and politics. Her feature documentaries Memories of a Penitent Heart (2016) and Landfall (2020) premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and were co-produced by the PBS series POV. Her third feature You Were My First Boyfriend had its World Premiere at the 2023 South by Southwest Film Festival and is now streaming on HBO. Her newest co-directed film Dear Ms.: A Revolution in Print premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival and aired on HBO Max in July 2025. Cecilia teaches at Williams College and is currently in development on her debut fiction feature.
Marjan Safinia’s films examine identity, community, and social justice. Most recently, with Grace Lee, she produced and directed And She Could Be Next, a two-part documentary series about women of color transforming American politics, which debuted as POV’s first series in June 2020 and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary. She is on the Board of Chicken & Egg Pictures and Color Congress, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Documentary Branch, a co-host of The D-Word, and a founding member of Beyond Inclusion. She considers herself a good troublemaker, and is a regular juror, programmer, speaker and connector of all things documentary.
Filmmaker, artist, and author Michèle Stephenson draws from her Haitian and Panamanian heritage to transform non-fiction storytelling. Through a Black Atlantic lens, Stephenson reimagines narratives of resistance and healing, weaving fiction, immersive, experimental, and hybrid forms that center the lived experiences of the Black diaspora. Her films Going To Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project and Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games were Oscar-shortlisted, with Going To Mars winning the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the prestigious Emmy Award for Outstanding Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. She is a Guggenheim Artist Fellow, Creative Capital Artist, and member of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
As shown in the below screenshots, several resources from And She Could Be Next are currently missing on the PBS LearningMedia site. Additional films with missing resources include Michèle Stephenson’s Stateless (2020), about Haitians losing their citizenship in the Dominican Republic, and Cecilia Aldarondo Landfall (2020), focused on Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria.
“‘C’ is for Censorship: PBS Cuts ‘Art Spiegelman’ Doc and Other Dubious Acts at Embattled Broadcaster by Anthony Kaufman”
May 19, 2025, Documentary Magazine Includes quotes from Cecilia Aldarondo, Marjan Safinia, and Michèle Stephenson