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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.
Politics & Government
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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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ASK NOT
by Johnny Symons
June 16, 2009
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As wars rage in the Middle East, the U.S. military is eager for more recruits—unless you happen to be openly gay. ASK NOT explores the tangled political battles that led to the infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and reveals the personal stories of gay Americans who serve in combat under a veil of secrecy.
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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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A personal documentary that chronicles the filmmaker’s struggle to know and grieve for the father she never knew, a soldier who died in Vietnam when she was a baby. Through her journey of discovery, and those of her family and her father’s friends, the film sheds light on the more than 20,000 Americans whose fathers were killed in Vietnam—and on those who continue to lose parents in war.
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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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Follow the 2004 Missouri Democratic primary to replace retiring former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt from inside the campaign of Jeff Smith. This 29-year-old part time political science teacher at Washington University with zero name recognition and no money started a youth-oriented insurgent campaign that took on the political establishment.
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Mixing animation with archival footage, Director Brett Morgen's CHICAGO 10 explores the buildup to and unraveling of the protest at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the ensuing 1969 Conspiracy Trial. CHICAGO 10 portrays the struggle of young Americans speaking out and taking a stand in the face of an oppressive and armed government.
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The EPA calls the mining town of Picher, Oklahoma the most toxic place in America, but a dwindling population still call it home. Today the town is divided by fears of serious health risks, environmental politics, civic pride and old racial tensions between Indian and white society. THE CREEK RUNS RED explores the human response to an environmental disaster and the complex connection between people and place. Co-production of KERA/Dallas in association with ITVS and NAPT.
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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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Directors Sabiha Sumar and Sachithanandam Sathananthan sit down with former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, before he resigns from office, to address his ideas of a democratized society in their country. The directors engage Musharraf in conversation about his political past and vision for the future and ask the bold question—how does an army general plan to establish democracy in Pakistan?
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ENRON
by Alex Gibney
April 24, 2007
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An Academy Award-nominated study of one of the biggest business scandals in American history, ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room chronicles a corporate disaster in which top executives from the seventh largest U.S. company walked away with over one billion dollars, leaving investors and employees with nothing.
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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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When one American family loses their son in the Iraq war, their lives—and views—are irrevocably changed. In A FAMILY AT WAR, Danish filmmakers follow the Kaylor family over the course of a year, tracing their individual reactions and changing attitudes on the military and global politics.
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THE GREAT PINK SCARE
by Tug Yourgrau and Dan Miller
Co-presentation with WGBY/Springfield, MA
June 6, 2006
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In 1960, a renowned Smith College professor suddenly became the target of a witch-hunt. His career, and the careers of other gay professors, was instantly destroyed when a controversial police raid uncovered homoerotic magazines in their homes. THE GREAT PINK SCARE explores the fierce clash that continues today between an individual's right to privacy and concerns for national security.
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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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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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KING CORN
by Aaron Woolf, Curt Ellis and Ian Cheney
April 15, 2008
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Two recent college graduates embark on a mission to see where America's food comes from—by growing it. In the rural town of Greene, Iowa, the two friends plant a single acre of the nation's most powerful crop—corn—and then set out to follow it from a seed to the dinner plate.
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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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Pentecostal/Baptist minister Curtis Boyd relinquished the pulpit in the 1960s to become a doctor who provided thousands of safe, illegal abortions prior to Roe v. Wade. This film tells the story of Dr. Boyd and a group of compassionate clergymen, who remain dedicated to the idea that all women have the right to a safe abortion.
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LIONESS
by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers
November 13, 2008
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They went to Iraq as cooks, clerks and mechanics and returned a year later as part of America's first generation of female combat veterans. In LIONESS, Directors Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers give an intimate look at war through the eyes of women and the U.S. military policy that bans them from combat.
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MAGGIE GROWLS
by Barbara Attie & Janet Goldwater
February 4, 2003
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How did one "little old lady" use her charm, savvy and outrage to fuel a political chain reaction that forever changed society's treatment of older Americans? MAGGIE GROWLS combines moving interviews, archival footage and wildly imaginative animation to tell the story of Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers.
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Dr. Jack Kessler, a prominent neurologist, shifts his diabetes research to stem cell research when his daughter is paralyzed from the waist down. MAPPING STEM CELL RESEARCH: Terra Incognita brings the stem cell debate to the forefront and examines the constantly evolving interplay between the promise of new discoveries, the controversy of modern science and the courage of people living with devastating disease and injury.
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MARCH POINT
by Tracy Rector and Annie Silverstein
November 18, 2008
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In the late 1950s, two oil refineries were built on March Point, an area that was once part of the Swinomish Reservation by treaty. MARCH POINT tells the story of three boys from the Swinomish Indian Tribe who make a movie about the destruction the refineries have wrought in their community.
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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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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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Three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Paul Conrad has drawn and quartered 11 presidents in a remarkable career spanning half a century. Narrated by Tom Brokaw, PAUL CONRAD: Drawing Fire pays tribute to a legendary journalist and artist who epitomizes the fiercely independent voice that has been vanishing from American news media in recent years.
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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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It’s time to cut our dependence on fossil fuel and pursue renewable energy. But how can it be done? Native American tribes turn to solar and wind sources to provide clean sustainable energy for cities across the West. Their traditional values toward conservation and the earth offer real solutions to America’s energy crisis.
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Amid pervasive blackouts and corruption, an American energy company purchases a previously state-run electricity company in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. Cultures clash, tempers flare and managers and locals tussle as a struggling nation attempts to build itself from beneath the rubble of Soviet collapse.
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Take a journey to one of the most beautiful yet dangerous places on Earth. Two American women, one Muslim and the other Hindu, sneak cameras into Kashmir — a place where different faiths have spawned an ongoing war between India and Pakistan. Their mission: find out what makes their peers choose their homeland over their own lives. As pressures rise, emotions run high and their friendship is tested.
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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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It's not easy to blow off the top of a mountain. But in Blair, West Virginia, the last remaining residents find it may be even harder to stop it. RAZING APPALACHIA chronicles a remarkable grassroots effort to fight against a massive mining project and the second largest coal company in America.
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RECYCLE
by Mahmoud al Massad
March 31, 2009
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Ride shotgun with ex-Mujahideen fighter Abu Amar and his son through the chaotic streets of Zarqa, Jordan—a hotbed of political extremism and birthplace of the infamous al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Follow Amar’s daily life as he scours the streets to earn a meager living collecting cardboard to recycle and struggles with his faith and the social realities of life in the Middle East.
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In 1942, 3,000 Japanese troops invaded the Aleutian Island of Attu in Alaska, the only invasion of American soil since the War of 1812. Sixty years later, two U.S. soldiers who fought on the remote island journey back to one of the worst battles of World War II, where they relive the 19-day combat that the American government kept secret.
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After Joanna Katz was brutally tortured and gang-raped, she faced her assailants and transformed herself into a victim’s rights advocate. Called upon to testify at parole hearings year after year, this South Carolina woman decided to collaborate with a seasoned filmmaker to tell her own story, challenging the parole system in order to heal herself—and to give courage to other women who have survived violent crimes.
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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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SHERIFF
by
Daniel Kraus
January 3, 2006
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With the help of God, guns and the hundreds of blood relatives that populate his jurisdiction, Sheriff Ronald E. Hewett oversees Brunswick County, North Carolina—a rural region fraught with murder, robbery and the occasional theft of ceramic lawn ornaments. SHERIFF is pure cinema verité, an unexpected portrait of a man trying to do good in a bad world.
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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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SISTERS OF '77
by Cynthia Salzman Mondell and Allen Mondell
March 1, 2005
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On a historic weekend in November 1977, 20,000 women and men attended the first federally funded National Women’s Conference in Houston, Texas, where they caucused, argued and finally hammered out resolutions that revolutionized the women’s movement. SISTERS OF ’77 weaves archival footage and interviews with past and current activists and participants.
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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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SUNSET STORY
by Laura Gabbert, Caroline Libresco and Eden H. Wurmfeld
March 22, 2005
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Irja, age 81, and her best friend, Lucille, age 95, are the only lucid residents at a senior citizens’ home for political progressives. SUNSET STORY delves into their world, revealing how these women salvage support and community in old age.
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How does the simple act of planting trees lead to winning the Nobel Peace Prize? Ask Wangari Maathai of Kenya. In 1977, she suggested rural women plant trees to address problems stemming from a degraded environment. Under her leadership, their tree-planting grew into a nationwide movement to safeguard the environment, defend human rights and promote democracy, earning Maathai the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.
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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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TRUDELL
by Heather Rae
Co-presentation with Native American Telecommunications Association
April 11, 2006
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Native American activist and poet John Trudell fuses his radical politics with music, writing and art. Combining images and archival footage with interviews and performances, this biography reveals the philosophy and motivations behind Trudell's work and his relationship to contemporary Indian history.
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The historic town of Hudson, New York is confronting a modern Goliath: its own future. TWO SQUARE MILES tracks the conflicts unfolding as a proposed multinational coal-fired cement plant threatens to reshape the community. Hudson's colorful and passionate residents, artists and activists attempt to save the town's unique character and architectural heritage and breathe life back into the exercise of democracy.
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For over 40 years, Ralph Nader has worked tirelessly as a consumer advocate, building a legislative record to rival that of any contemporary president. Yet today, many consider him merely an egomaniac and a "spoiler." AN UNREASONABLE MAN takes an unsparing look at one of the most important and controversial political figures our time.
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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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Welcome to Versailles, New Orleans — home to the densest ethnic Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. For more than 30 years, its residents lived a quiet existence on the edge of New Orleans. But then came Hurricane Katrina, the immense garbage piles and the shocking discovery of a toxic landfill planned in their neighborhood. Watch as they fight back, turning a devastating disaster into a catalyst for change and a chance to build a better future.
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THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND
by Sam Green, Carrie Lozano and Bill Siegel
Co-presented by KQED/San Francisco
April 27, 2004
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During the late 1960s and early 1970s, several hundred young women and men tried to spark a socialist revolution. The Weathermen waged a low-level war against the U.S. government: bombing the Capitol building, breaking Timothy Leary out of prison and evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history. Watch and listen as former members look back on this notorious movement, speaking candidly about their experiences. Narrated by Lili Taylor.
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What were the Japanese Kamikazes thinking just before crashing into their targets? When Risa Morimoto discovered that her beloved uncle trained as a Kamikaze pilot in his youth, she wondered the same thing. Through rare interviews with surviving Kamikaze pilots, Morimoto retraces their journeys from teenagers to doomed pilots and reveals a complex history of brutal training and ambivalent sacrifice.
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WONDERS ARE MANY tells the story of making a grand opera about the birth of the atomic bomb. This behind-the-scenes documentary follows Composer John Adams and Director Peter Sellars over the course of a year as they work to forge the tale of J. Robert Oppenheimer into a music drama like no other: the strange and beautiful Doctor Atomic.
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WRIT WRITER reveals a little-known battle of the Civil Rights Movement, led by an indigent, under-educated prisoner. Texas-born, Mexican American Fred Cruz came of age and found his life's calling in prison, where the sanctioned cruelty and brutality among inmates and guards moved him to fight the state prison system in the court of law.
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the National Endowment for the Arts