PBS American Portrait is the most ambitious multi-platform project in the organization's history. Since it launched in January 2020, the PBS American Portrait website has collected more than 11,000 stories from people across America that, together, hope to answer the question: What does it really mean to be an American today? Millions of people visited the site throughout 2020 to explore user-submitted stories in response to a series of thought-provoking prompts and the events of 2020 in real time. These stories helped share the themes reflected in the four-part docuseries.
Produced by PBS and RadicalMedia, each of the four new hour-long programs blends stories filmed by everyday people to create a chorus of voices sharing both common and unique experiences from across the country. Each episode in the series focuses on a main theme – "I Dream," about varied pursuits of the American Dream; "I Work," about the aspirations, struggles and satisfaction in our careers; "I Keep," about the traditions and values we hold; and "I Rise," about working to create an antiracist America. These experiences yield complex and diverse stories of what brings us together and what keeps us apart as we strive to understand one another.
The four-part documentary series, which captures the remarkable story of 2020 through the voices of everyday people from every U.S. state and territory will premiere Tuesday, January 5 at 8 p.m. on Panhandle PBS.
