BBC documentary strand Storyville reveals new slate including Arthur Ashe doc

Citizen Ashe focuses on tennis player and social activist Arthur Ashe

UK pubcaster the BBC’s documentary-focused strand Storyville has unveiled a slate of summer specials and three new commissions, including a film about grime music, to be shown in the coming months.

Among the summer specials is On the Morning You Wake (To the End of the World), which is about the false missile alert sent out across Hawaii in 2018. It charts the experiences of people who, for 38 minutes, had to make impossible decisions about what to do after receiving an emergency alert telling them to take immediate shelter from a “ballistic missile threat.”

The doc’s creative team includes Mike Brett and Steve Jamison of Archer’s Mark, Pierre Zandrowicz and Arnaud Colinart of Atlas V, producer Jo-Jo Ellison and coproducer Kurban Kassam, who collaborated with technology studio Novelab.

Elsewhere, produced by Nicolò Bassetti, Lucia Nicolai and Marcello Paolillo, Into My Name (Nel Mio Nome) follows the gender transition of three people in their 20s and 30s from different parts of Italy.

Citizen Ashe is the story of tennis player and social activist Arthur Ashe, who was the first black player to be selected for the US Davis Cup team. This film uncovers Ashe’s personal evolution and explores how his activism grew and embraced not only the civil rights movement and African Americans but oppressed peoples throughout the world.

Citizen Ashe is directed by Rex Miller and Sam Pollard, with Miller, Beth Hubbard, Anna Godas, Steven Cantor, Jamie Schutz and Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, who was married to Ashe until his death in 1993, serving as producers.

Among the upcoming films greenlit by Storyville is grime origin story doc 8 Bar: The Evolution of Grime, a BMG, BBC Film and BBC Storyville production in association with Gunpowder & Sky and My Accomplice.

A Story of Bones follows the fight for the proper memorialisation of an estimated 9,000 formerly enslaved Africans buried in an unmarked mass grave in Saint Helena following plans for a £285m (US$350m) airport on the island. The doc is directed by Joseph Curran and Dominic Aubrey de Vere and produced by Yvonne Isimeme Ibazebo.

Finally, Beneath the Surface, made in collaboration with NRK and BBC Storyville, is about the silenced stories of abuse from indigenous Sámi women, men and children in Norway.