Award-winning "Racing Dreams" Follows Three Tweens With Supercharged NASCAR Ambitions; Special POV Broadcast Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012 on PBS

Amid the Roar of 70-M.P.H. Go-Karts, Film Chronicles Young Love and Family Struggles as Kids Compete in the "Little League" of Professional Racing

"Racing Dreams is the unusual sports movie that is more interested in the lives of children. . . . one of the rare documentaries you leave wishing it was a little bit longer." – Stephen Holden, The New York Times

NEW YORK, Feb. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Award-winning filmmaker Marshall Curry, whose first two documentaries for POV (Point of View) have been nominated for Oscars® (Street Fight in 2006; If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front, in 2012), returns to POV for a third time with Racing Dreams, a chronicle of two boys and a girl who do something extraordinary: They fearlessly race extreme go-karts at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour in pursuit of trophies and, just maybe, careers as NASCAR drivers. And as the youngsters compete on the track, they also navigate the treacherous road from childhood to young adulthood.

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Racing Dreams, winner of the Best Documentary Feature Awards at the Tribeca, Nashville and Jacksonville Film Festivals and executive-produced by Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, has its national broadcast premiere on Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012, at 9 p.m. on PBS's POV series (check local listings) and will stream in its entirety on POV's website www.pbs.org/pov/racingdreams Feb. 24 - March 24. American television's longest-running independent documentary series, POV is the winner of a Special Emmy for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking, two IDA Awards for Best Continuing Series and NALIP's Corporate Commitment to Diversity Award.

DreamWorks Studios is currently developing Racing Dreams into a dramatic feature film produced by the team of Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Cowboys & Aliens, Transformers).

Fondly described as "Talladega Nights meets Catcher in the Rye," Racing Dreams is a dramatic, funny and sometimes heartbreaking look at the world of NASCAR culture as lived by three young aspirants to race-car glory and their families. The film follows Annabeth Barnes, Josh Hobson and Brandon Warren as they compete in the Pavement Series, a yearlong national championship of five races around the country organized by the World Karting Association (WKA).

The WKA's races have been a breeding ground for NASCAR racers—Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Danica Patrick and others started out racing competitive go-karts—and Annabeth, Josh and Brandon dream of stepping up to the "big leagues," too. In the film, Annabeth and Josh compete at the junior level, while Brandon is in his last season in the senior division.

For each of these young drivers, racing is more than just a hobby. Josh, who started racing when he was 5, grew up in car-country, not far from Flint, Mich. A well-spoken, straight-A student, he studies not only racing strategy, but also the political sensitivity it takes to be the kind of spokesman NASCAR and its sponsors favor.

Annabeth also has racing in her blood. Her Hiddenite, N.C. relatives have been racing cars "since back in the moonshine days," she explains, and the sport has a particular significance for her: "When you're racing you make your own decisions. . . . You're totally independent." She takes special pleasure in beating the boys in such a male-dominated sport, but as adolescence sets in, she feels torn between her love of racing, which requires her to travel nearly every weekend, and a desire to be a regular kid.

For Brandon, racing is in many ways an escape from a difficult home life in Creedmoor, N.C. "If I'm not racing, I'm not happy," he says. He lives with his grandparents in a double-wide trailer filled with racing memorabilia. Talented, funny and charismatic, Brandon also has a hot temper that sometimes gets him into trouble. He is aiming to win the championship that he lost the previous year when he was disqualified for rough driving.

As the tour unfolds, the three young racers step from the sheltered world of childhood into adolescence—discovering romance for the first time, questioning their relationships with their parents and glimpsing the serious obstacles that may threaten their ability to achieve their dreams.

"I think that pre-adolescence is probably the most important, poignant and under-explored stage in our lives," says director-producer Curry. "It's really when we are beginning to figure out who we are, how we relate to our parents, what romance feels like, and what we want to do.

"I hope that this movie will take people back to that age, and remind us of the dreams we had—to be President, or a baseball player, or wherever our imagination took us. Back before we knew about the importance of money or connections or how hard things were going to be, and we just dreamed."

Racing Dreams is produced by Marshall Curry Productions, GOOD and White Buffalo Entertainment.

About the "Racing Dreams" Subjects:
Annabeth Barnes is a third-generation racer who started in the Naskart Kids class at age 7. By age 11, she was one of the hottest female racers in the karting world, with 53 poles and 32 wins, several in some of the biggest races in the country. In 2009, she was the youngest person ever selected for NASCAR's Drive for Diversity. In Racing Dreams, she talks about her goal to become the first female to win the Daytona 500.

Annabeth is now in 11th grade and is racing full sized late-model stock cars against adult drivers. Last year at the Hickory Motor Speedway she had nine top-five finishes and one win, finishing fourth in track points for the year. Annabeth, is the subject of the Great American Country television series "Born to Drive," which follows her and her family at Hickory.

Josh Hobson is now a senior at Birch Run High School and hopes to go to college. For the past couple of years he has raced in a full-sized car in the American Speed Association (ASA) Late Model racing series. In addition to being a competitive driver, he is president of his school's student body and captain of the wrestling team. In racing, he has 34 national wins, 10 Grand National wins, 37 state race wins, nine division point championships and 52 Fast Time awards under his belt.

Brandon Warren, who hasn't raced since the season chronicled in Racing Dreams, became Lieutenant Colonel of the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps program at his high school in 2010, and is considering joining the military when he graduates.

About the Filmmaker:
Marshall Curry (Director, Producer)
Marshall Curry's Emmy- and Oscar®-nominated Street Fight, which he directed, produced, shot and edited, aired on POV in 2005. The film chronicles Cory Booker's first run for mayor of Newark, N.J. against incumbent Sharpe James, and won audience awards at the Tribeca Film Festival, AFI/Discovery Silverdocs and Hot Docs. It also received the Jury Prize for Best International Documentary at Hot Docs and was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award.

In 2005, Filmmaker Magazine selected Curry as one of "25 New Faces of Independent Film," and he was awarded the IDA's Jacqueline Donnet Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award. In 2007, he received an International Trailblazer Award at MIPDOC in Cannes. His recent film If a Tree Falls, winner of the U.S. Documentary Editing Award at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, aired on POV in 2011 and is nominated for a 2012 Oscar for Best Feature Documentary.

Curry was born in Summit, N.J., and spent part of his childhood in Charlotte, N.C. He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard, Duke, New York University and other colleges, and he has served on juries for the IDA, Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs. Prior to working as a filmmaker, he taught English in Guanajuato, Mexico, worked in public radio and taught government in Washington, D.C. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and was a Jane Addams Fellow at The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. He lives with his wife and children in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Credits:

POV Series Credits:

Awards and Festivals:

• Winner, Best Documentary Feature, Tribeca Film Festival
• Winner, Best Documentary Feature, Nashville Film Festival
• Winner, Best Documentary Feature, Jacksonville Film Festival
• Winner, Silver Hugo Award, Chicago International Film Festival
• Winner, Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature, Florida Film Festival
• Winner, Audience Award, Best Feature, Indianapolis International Film Festival

About POV
Produced by American Documentary, Inc. and now in its 25th year on PBS, the award-winning POV series is the longest-running showcase on American television to feature the work of today's best independent documentary filmmakers. Airing June through September with primetime specials during the year, POV has brought more than 300 acclaimed documentaries to millions nationwide and has a Webby Award-winning online series, POV's Borders. Since 1988, POV has pioneered the art of presentation and outreach using independent nonfiction media to build new communities in conversation about today's most pressing social issues. Visit www.pbs.org/pov.

Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, The Educational Foundation of America, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, FACT and public television viewers. Funding for POV's Diverse Voices Project is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Special support provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.

SOURCE POV

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