Documentary Miami Beach: 100 Years of Making Waves to Air on PBS

A new documentary titled Miami Beach: 100 Years of Making Waves made its debut last night during special viewing at the Art Deco Museum in South Beach. The showing comes in advance of the film being released to the pubic next week. The documentary celebrating the Miami Beach Centennial will air on WPBT this Monday at 9 p.m. The film is based on a book written by authors Charles J. Kropke and Eleanor Goldstein, who had released a prior book in 2013 titled South Beach: Stories of a Renaissance.

The documentary will feature the history of just how Miami because the travel destination is is today, a journey the authors breakdown in great detail.

"Miami Beach has welcomed many waves of people throughout the decades," Kropke says. "Well before the city was officially incorporated in March 26, 1915, the earliest settlers came here in the mid-1800s, followed in the 1910s and 1920s with a flood of winter visitors from northern states. Then came an influx of retirees from the Northeast in the 1930s, followed by the U.S. military that trained on Miami Beach during World War II in the 1940s. Later, waves included Cuban refugees during the 1980s and the international influx of investors and visitors who turned South Beach into one of the world's most glamorous destinations."

The PBS documentary is produced by California-based Symon Productions and narrated by the authors. The film features historic photos and videos, then transitions to colorful-vibrant 2015 South Beach scenes and locations. Topics the documentary will focus include the Great Hurricane of 1926 that complete washed away much of the infrastructure that made up pre-1920s South Beach, and the eventual iconic rebuilding of the area using the famous Art Deco look that still exists today. Also documented in the film is the use of Miami as a place soldiers trained during the war years, and how show business would soon find itself filming in Miami more and more in the '60s.