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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.
International
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ABDUCTION: The Megumi Yokota Story is the true story of a 13-year-old Japanese girl kidnapped by North Korean spies in 1977, and her parents' 30-year battle to bring her home. Told through the eyes of Megumi's parents, ABDUCTION follows their incredible journey full of bizarre twists, and a life they never imagined.
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Filmed by the first team of women video journalists ever to be trained in Afghanistan, this uncompromising film reveals the effects of the Taliban’s repressive rule and the U.S.-sponsored bombing campaign on Afghani women. Leaving Kabul for the first time and traveling to rural regions of the country, the filmmakers present footage of women whose lives have been decimated by recent events.
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In an Indiana Jones meets Mother Teresa adventure, three middle-aged men—former soldiers and modern-day knights—travel the world delivering life-saving humanitarian aid directly into the hands of civilians and doctors. Ed Artis, James Laws and Walt Ratterman inspire through deeds not words, in some of the most dangerous yet beautiful places on earth: the front lines of war.
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Of the millions of war refugees fleeing conflicts around the globe, almost half are children. Fostering dialogue on geography, human rights and diplomacy, BEYOND THE FIRE: Teen Experiences of War features teen refugees' stories, an interactive virtual passport, lesson plans and discussion guides.
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BLACK GOLD
by Nick Francis and Marc Francis
April 10, 2007
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Multinational companies have made coffee the second most valuable trading commodity in the world. But as westerners revel in designer lattes, impoverished Ethiopian coffee growers suffer the bitter taste of injustice. Tracing one man's fight for a fair price, BLACK GOLD is an eye-opening expose of the eighty billion dollar coffee industry.
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Jasmine left her village in a remote part of China to get a job and help her family. Now she and her teenage friends at the blue jean factory are trying to survive in a brutal work environment. Shot clandestinely, CHINA BLUE takes a rare and poignant look at the individuals who toil day-to-day to make the clothes we buy. Co-production of ITVS in association with CAAM.
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Young girls whose lives were shattered by the child sex trade describe the day they were abducted from their villages as “the day my god died.” By weaving footage from the brothels of Bombay with these girls’ stories, Levine offers an unforgettable examination of the growing plague of child sex slavery.
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DEATH OF A SHAMAN
by Fahm Fong Saeyang and Richard Hall
Co-presented by KVIE/Sacramento and the
Center for Asian American Media
May 27, 2004
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Through a journey that takes her back to her roots in Thailand, a young Mien woman from Sacramento strives to come to terms with her father’s death and drug addiction and her sister’s murder. Reunited with her Mien relatives, she begins to grasp the complexity of her father’s past and experience the nuances of lost identity.
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DEEP WATER
by Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell
June 15, 2008
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The compelling story of the fateful voyage of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur yachtsman who entered the most daring nautical challenge ever—the very first solo, non-stop, round-the-world boat race. Through re-enactments and interviews DEEP WATER reveals Crowhurst's maritime inexperience and an ending that shocked a nation.
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Does a free society require an energetically free press? DEMOCRACY ON DEADLINE shadows courageous journalists and champions of independent media as they work to make, and keep, their societies free—in Afghanistan, Israel, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, Sierra Leone and the United States.
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Living in poverty with their mother in the mountains of Bolivia, 14-year-old Basilio and his 12-year-old brother, Bernardino, brave deadly conditions while working long shifts in the Cerro Rico silver mines to earn enough money to attend school. THE DEVIL'S MINER follows the brothers into the underground mining tunnels where they tempt fate to gain a better life.
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In suburban Tokyo, Yumi finds herself waiting every day with the same group of strangers for the same seats on the same train. Who are these fellow commuters? Where do they live? What are they like? One day, she decides to find out.
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Prior to his death in a Baghdad bombing attack in 2003, former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Sergio Vieira de Mello devoted his life to global humanitarian efforts in countries such as Mozambique, Cambodia and East Timor. EN ROUTE TO BAGHDAD is a portrait of Vieira de Mello and his extraordinary career and a tragic metaphor for the effort to bring stability to Iraq.
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While working on his latest screenplay in Beijing, Hui Rao is suffering from serious writer's block and begins to live the life of the character he is trying to create. The character, Lin Hao, is running from his past and leads Rao to a mysterious village in northern China where the character's history and motivations come into question.
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IMELDA
by Ramona Diaz
Co-presented with NAATA
May 10, 2005
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How has the former first lady of the Philippines managed to court, coddle, use and abuse power—for nearly four decades? Watch news clips, propaganda films, home movies, vérité footage and revealing interviews with Marcos herself as well as with her friends and her enemies.
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IRON LADIES OF LIBERIA
by Daniel Junge, Siatta Scott-Johnson, Henry Ansbacher and Jonathan Stack
March 18, 2008
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With unprecedented access, this intimate documentary goes behind the scenes with Africa's first freely elected female head of state, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia. The film explores the challenges facing the new president and the extraordinary women surrounding her as they develop and implement policy to rebuild their ravaged country and prevent a descent back into civil war.
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LA SIERRA
by Scott Dalton and Margarita Martinez
April 18, 2006
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A small neighborhood in Medellín, Colombia, La Sierra is ruled by a group of young men, mostly teenagers, affiliated with Colombia's illegal paramilitary armies. Over one year, LA SIERRA follows the lives of three of these young people—two of them paramilitaries themselves—as they experience war, death and love.
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Israeli filmmaker David Fisher inspires his four siblings to begin an emotionally challenging search for their long-lost sister. In a creative documentary style, with revealing moments of grief and humor, Fisher dissects a tangled web of relationships to uncover the dark secrets of the past, secrets that his parents were afraid to unearth and that are representative of Israel’s own birth pains.
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As three of the thousands of Latina immigrants working as nannies and housekeepers in Los Angeles, Judith, Telma and Eva have all left family and friends behind to come to America. MAID IN AMERICA reveals the challenges these women face as they pursue "the American Dream," their significant roles in American households and the globalization of motherhood.
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MIRROR DANCE
by Frances McElroy and Maria T. Rodriguez
Co-presentation with Latino Public Broadcasting
November 15, 2005
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Identical twins Margarita and Ramona de Saá were acclaimed ballerinas with the National Ballet of Cuba. Once inseparable, their relationship disintegrated as one sister left for America while the other embraced the Cuban Revolution. MIRROR DANCE is the story of two women forever linked by birth and dance, struggling to overcome rifts not only between sisters, but also between nations.
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Nearly one in seven Afghan women die in childbirth. MOTHERLAND AFGHANISTAN introduces the women behind these devastating statistics. Afghan American filmmaker Sedika Mojadidi examines her father's works as an OB/GYN as he struggles to make a difference, first at Kabul's recently renamed Laura Bush Maternity Ward and then in an isolated provincial hospital, where patients often travel for several days to get treatment.
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THE NEW AMERICANS
by Gita Saedi, Gordon Quinn and Steve James
Co-presented by Latino Public Broadcasting and the
Center for Asian American Media
March 29, 2004
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What does the “American dream” look like through the eyes of today’s immigrants and refugees? From Nigeria, India, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, they come with different dreams: to achieve athletic glory or high-tech riches, to escape poverty and persecution, to provide for their families. This seven-hour three-part series follows these newcomers from each of their homelands through their first tumultuous years in America.
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Born in a Thai refugee camp on Cambodian New Year, filmmaker Socheata Poeuv grew up in the United States never knowing that her family had survived the Khmer Rouge genocide. In NEW YEAR BABY, she embarks on a journey to Cambodia in search of the truth and why her family's history had been buried in secrecy for so long.
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In an elementary school in the city of Wuhan in central China, three eight-year-old students campaign for the coveted position of class monitor. This is the first election for a class leader to be held in China. The three candidates hold debates, campaign tirelessly and show their intellectual and artistic skills, until one is voted the winner.
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REVOLUCION tells the story of five Cuban photographers whose lives and work span more than four decades and whose perspectives on photography are as varied as their opinions about the Cuban Revolution. From Epic-era photographers whose lens portrayed the heroic masses to more contemporary photographers who seek to portray individual truths, their stories discover the power of art to liberate.
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SEOUL TRAIN
by Lisa Sleeth, Jim Butterworth and Aaron Lubarsky
December 13, 2005
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A growing and potentially explosive humanitarian crisis is threatening East Asian peace: the life and death of North Koreans as they try to escape their homeland and China. Exposing the complex geopolitics and bureaucracy entangling the lives of
thousands of North Korean refugees, SEOUL TRAIN is also the story of a
group of dedicated activists--putting themselves in harms way to rescue
refugees via an underground railroad.
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SHADYA
by Danny Hakim, Udi Kalinsky and Roy Westler
January 16, 2007
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Shadya Zoabi, a charismatic 17-year-old karate world champion, strives to succeed on her own terms within her traditional Muslim village in northern Israel. Despite her father's support, she faces the challenge of balancing her dreams with her religious commitments and other's expectations. SHADYA takes an intimate look at the evolution of a young Israeli Arab woman with feminist ideas in a male-dominated culture.
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SISTERS IN LAW looks at the work of one small courthouse in the African nation of Cameroon. With fierce compassion, the tough-minded state prosecutor Vera Ngassa and court president Beatrice Ntuba dispense wisdom, wisecracks and justice in fair measure.
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During the Nazi occupation of France, four young women—who were neither Jews nor Communists nor in any danger of arrest—chose to risk their lives as Resistance fighters. SISTERS IN RESISTANCE shares the story of four heroines whose intense friendship, sorrows and social activism lasted long after the war was won.
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STORM OF EMOTIONS is a film about the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip and efforts to achieve democracy amidst great social and political turmoil. Told from the perspective of the Israeli police force, this film explores how these individuals try to balance their emotions, beliefs and conscience while attempting to maintain civil order and a democratic outcome.
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When Janet Rosenberg Jagan—the filmmaker’s cousin—was elected Guyana’s president in 1997, she became the first American-born woman to lead a nation. THUNDER IN GUYANA interweaves family history and Guyanese history with the extraordinary life story of this unconventional woman, who, along with her husband, Cheddi Jagan, is considered to be one of the founders of Guyana.
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While working with an international aid organization stationed in a remote village in Zambia, filmmaker Shantha Bloemen began seeing more and more unemployed Zambians selling used American clothing in the marketplace. Tracing a winding T-shirt trail carved by global economics, this documentary examines the devastating role of World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in directing Zambia’s economic policies and the underlying reasons for so many Africans’ remaining in poverty.
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Meet eight young Vietnamese, some born in the final days of the Vietnam War, others in the war’s tragic aftermath. They are entrepreneurs and street kids, farmers and students, artists and engineers. Together they embody the hopes, dreams and frustrations of a new Vietnam. Through their stories, this groundbreaking film takes an in-depth look at modern-day Vietnam, where Communism and capitalism are going head-to-head.
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This documentary puts a human face on the Middle East conflict by chronicling the story of Bassam, a Palestinian American telephone repairman from Cleveland who returns home for an arranged marriage with a "home-made bride." On the West Bank, everyday domestic duties and squabbles are carried out against a backdrop of shelling and violence. Once in America, however, his bride discovers that life in exile is not necessarily an easier alternative.
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Exploring the drama and complexities behind producing international versions of the world’s most popular children’s television program and created in cooperation with the show itself, THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SESAME STREET illustrates how social impact can come from the most seemingly unlikely sources, including a team of Muppets.
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the National Endowment for the Arts