{alltv} For filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, everything is political

Daughter of House Speaker uses HBO documentary to make statement.

Alexandra Pelosi uses film as a way to make political statements.

"You expect to see kids in the dumpsters in Third World countries, but you don't expect it across the street from Disneyland," says Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker Pelosi, whose newest Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County, made its debut recently on HBO.

For those quick to dismiss Pelosi because of her liberal pedigree, she's the youngest daughter of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House, take note: She's eager to give props to former President George W. Bush for the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (tucked into No Children Left Behind), which guarantees children, without an address, the right to attend school. "George Bush deserves to get some love for that," says Pelosi, 39.

The former NBC producer thinks it's unfair but has made peace with the fact that, everything she does will be taken out of context by some. "I've literally been working as a journalist for half my life and now I'm being pre-judged," says Pelosi.

But everything is political, she acknowledges. Even her new documentary because basically what it's saying, she says, is that poor kids in America need an education and the budgets are being cut and that these at risk kids need to go to school because if they don't, they're going to end up in jail, period. "You want to pay for school or you want to pay for their jail, you decide," says Pelosi. "It gets political quickly."

It is her preschool aged sons, not her politics, that were the "inspiration" and "motivation" for Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County, her sixth documentary for HBO "Once I had kids, I started to see the world through the eyes of a three-year-old," says Pelosi, whose boys ask her about the homeless men on the streets of New York, where they live.

While Pelosi says she might not be tackling "the big questions" in her HBO documentaries, such as The Trials of Ted Haggard, Diary of a Political Tourist and Right America: Feeling Wronged, that fellow filmmaker Michael Moore is asking, such as "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" She has decided: "Those questions are above my pay grade. I can't find the weapons of mass destruction. I have two kids. That's not really going to work for me."

Pelosi's family, this time it's husband, Michiel Vos, a correspondent for a Dutch TV station, is also the inspiration for her next project. While at his citizenship ceremony at Ellis Island last September, she found many fascinating stories among the new citizens. That led her to think, "I know what it's like in New York, but what's it like in places like Butte, Mont., and Des Moines?"

To answer that question, she's on the road with her family this summer attending swearing in ceremonies in all 50 states. What she's learned so far? "The face of America is really changing (and) it's really interesting to learn why an immigrant would come from El Salvador to Butte, Mont. (For my husband) it's a nice welcome to America," says Pelosi. "We're going to see what Sarah Palin would call 'The Real America.' "

Like Pelosi said, everything is political.

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