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Independent Lens is broadcast on most PBS stations on Tuesdays at 10:00 p.m.
Please check the broadcast schedule. Dates and times may vary.
African American
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As Duke Ellington's co-composer, arranger, and right-hand man, Billy Strayhorn wrote some of the greatest American music of the 20th century. But as a gay man in the '40s and '50s, Strayhorn had to lead a discreet existence, while Ellington played to thunderous applause on center stage. BILLY STRAYHORN: Lush Life tells the story of the unheralded man who changed jazz and popular music forever, maintaining artistic and personal integrity, while challenging prejudice along the way.
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BANISHED
by Marco Williams
February 19, 2008
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From the 1860s to the 1920s, dozens of towns and counties across America violently expelled entire African American communities, forcing thousands of black families to flee their homes. A century later, these towns remain mostly white. BANISHED tells the story of three of these communities and their black descendants, who return to learn shocking histories.
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BROTHER TO BROTHER
by Rodney Evans
Co-presentation with the National Black Programming Consortium
June 14, 2005
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After being rejected by his family, Perry (Anthony Mackie), a struggling young artist, befriends an elderly stranger—Bruce Nugent (Roger Robinson), the black gay writer who co-founded the revolutionary journal Fire!! Through Nugent’s memories, Perry discovers the legacies of the gay and lesbian subcultures within the Harlem Renaissance.
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On February 1, 1960, four college students staged a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina that turned out to be a pivotal event in the Civil Rights Movement. In this intimate portrait, find out what led these four friends to protest—and how it has impacted their lives.
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Will mothers tip the scales in the battle over gun control? GUNS & MOTHERS traces the activism of two women on opposite sides of the issue: Maria, a mother of four and spokeswoman for Second Amendment Sisters; and Frances, an advocate of gun control who lost three sons to urban bullets.
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HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes takes an in-depth look at machismo in rap music and hip-hop culture—where creative genius, poetic beauty and mad beats collide with misogyny, violence and homophobia. Produced in association with ITVS and NPBC.
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Jazz balladeer Jimmy Scott informs his art with lessons learned from 78 hard-lived years of failure and redemption. Through international concert footage, portraiture and intimate interviews, this oft-sidelined jazz immortal, whose soft sensuality and impossibly high voice are legendary, recounts his stranger-than-fiction odyssey through poverty and obscurity to worldwide recognition as one of the most distinctive and revered vocalists of our time.
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JULY '64
by Carvin Eison and Chris Christopher
Co-presentation with WXXI/Rochester and the National Black Programming Consortium
February 14, 2006
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In the summer of 1964, a three-night riot erupted in two predominantly black neighborhoods in downtown Rochester, New York—the culmination of decades of poverty, joblessness and racial discrimination and a significant event in the Civil Rights era. Using archival footage and interviews with those who were present, JULY '64 explores the genesis and outcome of these three devastating nights.
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Legendary jazz bassist Milt Hinton (1910–2000) was also a skilled photographer and storyteller. Using archival footage, hundreds of photographs and interviews with Hinton and fellow musicians such as Branford Marsalis and Quincy Jones, KEEPING TIME is an insider’s view of jazz and life in 20th-century America.
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Easter in Washington, D.C. means children hunting for eggs on the White House lawn. But a block away is one of America’s poorest neighborhoods, where a storefront church serves as a beacon of hope. Tracing the lives of four parishioners in the months before Easter, this film shows how the holiday’s promise helps pull them through adversity.
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This inspiring film follows five children as they fight cancer with the help of their families, nurses and doctors. This harrowing and intimate series spans six years to chronicle how families respond to crises, how courage is found in unlikely places and how the humor and energy of youth can be powerful medicine.
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A “troublesome property” for his master, Nat Turner has remained a “troublesome property” for historians, novelists, dramatists and others who have struggled to understand the leader of the famous 1831 slave rebellion. Using an innovative approach that combines documentary techniques, dramatic filmmaking and historical methodology, this program explores how the many meanings of Nat Turner remain critical to understanding the racial history of our country.
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Credited with inspiring the Black Power Movement, Robert Williams led his North Carolina hometown to defend itself against the Ku Klux Klan and challenge repressive Jim Crow laws. NEGROES WITH GUNS follows Williams's journey from southern community leader to his exile in Cuba and China—a journey that brought the issue of armed self-defense to the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement.
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Greg Smith and his family bare all in this unflinching portrait of a 65-pound man striving for the American Dream. In 1992, fueled by discrimination, Smith created On a Roll Talk Radio from his wheelchair. The father of three travels the globe but finds his own nation’s capital inaccessible—a minor challenge compared with living independently and having safe intimate relationships.
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George Clinton: mastermind behind the band Parliament Funkadelic. Find out how he expressed the cultural alienation of young African Americans, creating an alternate universe of “aliens” who brought the redemptive power of funk to a world sorely in need of a new point of view.
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A PLACE OF OUR OWN
by Stanley Nelson
Co-presented by the National Black Programming Consortium
February 17, 2004
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A PLACE OF OUR OWN explores the rarely seen world of the black middle class and the town of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, where African Americans have vacationed for generations. Through intimate stories of African Americans in Oak Bluffs, director Stanley Nelson discovers a renewed appreciation for the place his father established as a summer home for the Nelson family for generations to come.
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RACE IS THE PLACE
by Rick Tejada-Flores and Ray Telles
Co-presentation with the National Minority Consortia and KERA/Dallas
November 22, 2005
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How do American artists address our nation's most pressing social issue?
Using spoken, sung and chanted word, African American, Latino, Asian
American, Pacific Islander and Native American authors, performance
artists, poets and singers explore the pain, frustration and humor of
racism in America.
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RACE TO EXECUTION traces the fates of two Death Row inmates—Robert Tarver in Alabama and Madison Hobley in Chicago. Through these compelling personal narratives and the often unexpected results of research on race, justice and the media, the film exposes the factors that influence who lives and who dies at the hands of the state. Co-production of ITVS and co-presentation with NBPC.
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Radio stations banned it, but when Billie Holiday sang "Strange Fruit" the whole world listened anyway. Drawing on courage, genius and luck, a little-known Jewish songwriter and African American icon created the song that not only altered the course of their own lives but changed America forever.
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Raised by their grandmother, young Raymond and Danny continue to hold out hope for their mother's recovery from drug addiction—even after she's given up hope herself. This Academy Award-nominated cinema verité portrait explores the strength and love that bring together two brothers who long to be reunited with their mother.
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the National Endowment for the Arts