HBO Unveils New Docs

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK: HBO has announced its documentary lineup for the first half of this year, as well as a deal with Spike Lee for a follow-up to the Emmy-winning New Orleans doc When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.

HBO is working with Lee and 40 Acres and a Mule for the as-yet-untitled follow-up, which is slated to air this summer marking the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on the city of New Orleans. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts featured survivors of the disaster. Broadcast in 2006, it picked up three Emmy Awards. "When the Levees Broke‘ was a landmark in documentary filmmaking," noted Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films. "It’s an exciting notion to anticipate Spike going back for this reprise."

The new film will revisit some of the people who appeared in When the Levees Broke to find out what has happened to their lives since then. It will look at the progress and failures in education, housing and population relocation.

Other upcoming HBO docs include The Black List: Vol. 3, airing February 8, presenting dramatic portraits of some of today’s most fascinating and influential African-Americans; Reporter (February 18), which follows Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times and is executive produced by Ben Affleck; Afghan Star, about the Tolo TV talent show of the same name and its impact on Afghani society; and Google Baby, which focuses on an Israeli entrepreneur who proposes a new service with embryos fertilized in the U.S. and babies implanted in the wombs of surrogates in India, and an Indian doctor whose clinic recruits surrogate mothers. The lineup also features A Mother’s Courage: Talking Back to Autism, narrated by Oscar-winner Kate Winslet; Sergio, based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Samantha Power’s biography Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World; and I Knew It Was You, a portrait of the actor John Cazale.