WLRN-TV

"Crossing Overtown" examines the integral role Miami would play in the national civil rights movement and the long narrative of racial conflict that still resonates in the national conversation. Overtown is the oldest Black community in Miami and it would bear witness to the full arc of the civil rights movement.

Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman, the last two survivors of the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, recount the horrors they experienced during the war and talk about their lives after their escape in a prisoner uprising in 1943. Willenberg would go on to become a hero of the 1944 Warsaw uprising while Taigman would be called as a witness during the infamous trial of Adolf Eichmann.

In the 1980s, a swine flu crossed the Haitian-Dominican border and started to affect the Creole pig, an important commodity in Haiti. The flu also threatened livestock in the United States. As a preemptive measure, the USAID in conjunction with the Haitian government proceeded to exterminate all Creole pigs from the island, leading to a crushing economic blow for an already impoverished country.

A one-hour documentary that tells the story of how Standard Oil magnate Henry Flagler came to Florida in the late 1800s, built a railroad and hotel empire on the last American frontier, and launched a population boom that lasts a hundred years.

Explores the Shuttle Program through the eyes of some of the exceptional men and women who worked behind-the-scenes to make it fly. A unique and intimate portrait of the Shuttle Years, their recollections and personal archives reveal their fondest memories and darkest hours: from the launching and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station, to the loss of Shuttles Challenger and Columbia in accidents that were ultimately seen as avoidable, and in many ways served as the impetus for the fleet’s early retirement.

A film about the prominent role South Florida, and its Caribbean neighbors played in the transportation of illegal booze into the U.S. during this infamous era. Depicting the prohibition era experience from Palm Beach to Key West is the engaging documentary, “Prohibition and the South Florida Connection.”

Densely developed, low-lying South Florida is one of the most vulnerable regions to sea-level rise and climate change in the U.S. and the world. South Florida sits on the front lines of sea-level rise and climate change—and this WLRN original production offers a compelling look at how local communities are responding. Filmed throughout the 2024 hurricane season, it highlights innovative projects and grassroots efforts across the region, from infrastructure improvements to environmental education and citizen science. Following climate leaders and advocates over the course of a year, the film captures both the urgency of these challenges and the resilience of those working toward solutions. It culminates at a regional summit in Key West, where participants reflect on progress and the path ahead.

Engaging and light-hearted story of how a radical New Deal economic experiment during the Great Depression created an image of Key West in the popular culture and how that image became the island’s destiny. The film features interviews with famous contemporary writers, such as Gore Vidal and Russell Banks, and newly uncovered archival photos and footage, including rare Hemingway home movies.

Plastic Paradise is the first documentary to chronicle the rise, fall, and resurgence of tiki, or Polynesian pop, one of the defining cultural trends of postwar America. Think South Pacific, candy-colored, rum-infused cocktails with names like the Shrunken Skull and the Missionary's Downfall, crazy Hawaiian shirts, exotica music, and a nonstop party scene inhabited by self-styled nonconformists. That was then. Today, tiki has been embraced by a coast-to-coast underground hipster subculture of former punk rockers, vintage junkies, and escapists. Featuring historians and hula dancers, master mixologists, mermaids, and more, Plastic Paradise is your ticket to this little-known, fascinating scene, including a pilgrimage to the famed Mai-Kai Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale for Hukilau, an annual anything goes celebration that draws Polynesian popsters from all over the world.

Rising Tide is a documentary project that follows seven young artists during the peak of Miami's art season. The film explores city's art culture and examines the impact Art Basel Miami Beach has had on Miami's development as an art city. Rising Tide provides context for Miami's underground art and highlights some of the characteristics that make Miami such an unusual and creative metropolis.

A Nervous Man Shouldn't Be Here in the First Place: The Life of Bill Baggs traces writer Amy Paige Condon’s nearly 13-year journey to tell the story of one of the most influential newspaper editors of the mid-20th century. The story captures the history of Miami, the community’s geopolitical importance, and the loss of one of its greatest champions.

It’s a Saturday night in 1954 and the roar of the racecars at Hialeah Speedway can be heard all over town for the first time. Families would gather, men would cheer, and teenagers would peek through the fences to steal a glimpse of the action and larger-than-life racing personalities. Then, in 2005, the track was silenced forever.

Every year during the Art Basel fair, street artists from around the globe converge on Miami’s Wynwood district to transform its streets anew with a riot of creative colors. Streets of Wynwood transports the viewer into this nomadic subculture to meet some of world’s best exponents of urban art and to appreciate first-hand how this once clandestine tribe of taggers, graffiti writers and muralists have claimed their place in the broader art world. It’s a dazzling experience.

Discover how a small Florida town called Boca Raton was the site of a top-secret military project during World War II. Thousands of airmen were tasked with learning the ins and outs of an emerging technology known as airborne radar. See how this tiny device turned the tide of World War II for Allied forces.