Streaming tips

The 1970s all over again...

Meltdown: Three Mile Island

A new four-part documentary revisits the 1979 accident at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant. The greatest surprise: the tale of a whistleblower who during the cleanup helped avert a catastrophe that could have made the East Coast uninhabitable. Netflix

Our Nixon

A fresh take on Richard Nixon is rare, but director Penny Lane came close with this 2013 documentary that featured home-movie footage shot by Nixon’s top aides.The 37th president comes across as almost human—before his vindictive, paranoid traits emerge. Amazon Prime

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry

Mary Dore’s taut, powerful primer on the women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and ’70s focuses on the grassroots organizers who led the fights for equal pay, child care, and, of course, reproductive rights. Tubi

The Black Power Mixtape This impressionistic portrait of the Black Power movement, featuring footage shot in the 1960s and ’70s by a Swedish film crew, provides intimate glimpses of Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, and other leading activists. Kanopy

Whose Crisis Is This?

In the 1970s, war and embargoes twice led to spikes in gas prices.This 1979 public television special doesn’t provide a comprehensive view of that era of inflation, but it’s a revealing snapshot of the anxieties that families experienced at a moment similar to ours. www.tpt.org

Earth Days

Robert Stone’s 2009 history of the American environmental movement is, in part, a look back at 1970 and the first Earth Day—how it came to be and which of its ideals were realized. Kanopy