V Series

Since the media are attuned to following the loudest, the biggest and the bloodiest, it was inevitable that quiet, hard-working Korean-Americans caught in the cross fire of the Los Angeles riots last year were going to be the last group to be heard from. "Sa-I-Gu" (at 10 p.m. Sunday on KCET-TV Channel 28, on the "P.O.V." series) is only a start in making reparation, but an unexpected one.

The Black Panther Party, whose presence has been felt far longer than the organization's actual active life, tends to stir up deep, almost irrational passions in America's far political wings. While both sides have railed for and against the Panthers, a reasoned, objective history of the group's rise and fall has yet to be written. And we're no closer to the unvarnished truth with Peter Miller's and John Valadez's "Passin' It On," on PBS' "P.O.V." series tonight.

TV sitcoms may paint most teenagers as worldly-wise and knowing, but "Girls Like Us," the latest in PBS' "P.O.V." series of independent films, offers compelling evidence that sexual naivete, emotional confusion and shaky identity are closer to adolescent reality. This 1997 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, from filmmakers Jane C.

Underneath the surface of Teodoro Maniaci and Francine Rzeznik's rambling 90-minute documentary for the "P.O.V." series, "One Nation Under God," lies a welter of tribal-like loathings and accusatory stances. While the film is ostensibly about the history of psychological and religious techniques to turn gays and lesbians into heterosexuals, it is really about the growing Balkanization of America. In true "P.O.V."

The kind of skills documentary filmmaker Lisanne Skyler brings to her one-hour work for PBS' "P.O.V." series, "No Loans Today," are hidden behind the camera. As is Frederick Wiseman, the cinema wonder she is influenced by, Skyler is able to earn the trust of people living in extreme conditions, providing them with a comfort zone to reveal themselves.

"I place rings in the machine." "I tape electronic pieces." "I assemble urinary bags." One by one, the women of "Maquilapolis," or "city of factories," describe in flat tones what they do for hours and hours at a stretch on the Tijuana assembly lines of Sony, Panasonic, Sanyo, Nellcor Puritan Bennett and other corporations. The documentary, part of PBS' "P.O.V."

David Sutherland's "Out of Sight," for PBS' "P.O.V." series, tries to hybridize social documentary, intimate biography and soapy melodrama into one odd duck of a film. So odd that it's clear by the end of 90 minutes that even Sutherland is a little foggy on what it's all about. What it's ostensibly about is the life and passions of Diane Starin, blind since she was 18 months old but utterly unlike the stereotype of "the nice blind lady" with the cane and the dog.

Burroughs Corp. said Wednesday that, as the latest move in a continuing program of plant consolidation, it would lay off 900 employees by the end of September, including nearly 300 at manufacturing plants in Carlsbad, Rancho Bernardo and Pasadena.

A Louisiana state judge has approved a settlement that will give $1,000 certificates to 5.8 million owners of General Motors Corp. trucks with allegedly dangerous side-mounted gas tanks. But the auto maker may appeal the $28 million in fees and expenses, the maximum possible amount the judge could order, GM spokesman Ed Lechtzin said Friday. "What we've got is an issue over fees that will be paid to the attorneys . . .

Filmmaker Garth Stein's "When Your Head's Not a Head, It's a Nut" not only may be one of the ultimate home videos, but it also defines in its whimsically elliptical way what makes artists different from other people. Oh, and by the way, it's also about brain surgery. (Part of the "P.O.V." series, it airs at 10 tonight on KCET-TV Channel 28, and at 9 on KPBS-TV Channel 15.