In 1973, the Loud family became a television sensation of a new kind. It was long before a metal rock star showed his eccentric family on the small screen and decades before housewives had screaming matches with each other on camera in public. CINEMA VERITE tells the behind-the-scenes story of the groundbreaking documentary "An American Family," which chronicled the lives of the Louds in the early 1970s and catapulted the Santa Barbara family to notoriety while creating a new television genre: the reality TV series.

Chanel is living the high life until one day, while out shopping with her boyfriend DeAndre, they're both arrested. As Chanel finds herself behind bars for a crime she didn't commit, a judge places her under house arrest. With nowhere to go, she is forced to move back in with her mother and daughter, who live on the ghetto side of town. While Chanel adjusts to her new lifestyle, DeAndre makes her a proposition from jail that will have her torn between her two lifestyles: take the blame or prove her innocence.

Boston lawyer Mary Ross inherits a house in Plymouth, Mass., from her great-aunt and plans to sell it. But soon has a change of heart, which is complicated by local historian, Everett Mather who's research indicates that the houses location might be the site of the original Thanksgiving.