TV Schedule
Independent Lens airs Monday nights on most PBS member stations.
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This Week
May 13 at 10 PMby Kirby DickThe most shameful and best-kept secret in the U.S. Military? The epidemic of rape and sexual assault within the ranks. An American female soldier in a combat zone is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire.
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Coming Up
May 27 at 10 PMby Heidi Ewing and Rachel GradyCan the Motor City rise from its ashes? A dynamic cluster of local innovators, entrepreneurs, and proud, self-proclaimed "hustlers” are poised to resurrect Detroit. The result could be a radically new city for the postindustrial age.
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June 17 at 10 PMby Nicole Newnham and Maren GraingerAmlan Ganguly, a lawyer-turned social entrepreneur, has sown hope in the poorest neighborhoods of Calcutta by empowering children to become leaders in improving health, transforming their communities for the better.
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Previously Featured
May 6 at 10 PMby Debbie LumTwo strangers — an aging white man and a young Chinese woman — pursue a marriage brokered by the Internet. They get more than they bargained for when she moves to America to be his bride in this quirky, appealing documentary.
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April 29 at 10 PMby Marco WilliamsThousands of migrants have perished in recent years while trying to cross the unforgiving Sonora desert in search of a better life in the United States. The film gives a face to some of the dead, and follows them on their long journey home.
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April 22 at 10 PMby Jon ShenkFollow the story of former President of the Maldives, Mohamed Nasheed, a man confronting a problem greater than any other world leader has ever faced: the literal survival of his country and everyone in it as the rise in sea level threatens to submerge the islands.
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April 15 at 10 PMby Kristy Guevara-FlanaganFollow the fascinating evolution and legacy of Wonder Woman. From the birth of the comic book superheroine in the 1940s to today, see how popular representations of powerful women often reflect society's anxieties about women's liberation.
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April 8 at 10 PMby Eugene Jarecki
The war on drugs is the longest conflict in U.S. history — and the least winnable. It has had a particularly destructive, devastating impact on black America. And still, drugs are cheaper, stronger, and more plentiful than ever.
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Airing with:As I am (Short Film)by Alan SpearmanThe struggle of one young man in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the poorest city in America, trying to escape grinding poverty.
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April 1 and 2 at 9 PMby David Sutherland
A Co-presentation by Independent Lens and FRONTLINERobin Charboneau, a magnetic Oglala Sioux woman in North Dakota, struggles to negotiate single motherhood, tenuous sobriety, and a labyrinthine justice system to emerge intact after years of domestic abuse.
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February 11 and March 4
Check Broadcast Schedule for times.
by Maro Chermayeff, Jamie Gordon, and Mikaela BeardsleyA landmark series based on the book by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky introduces women and girls who are living under almost unimaginably brutal circumstances — and fighting courageously to change them. The four-hour series follows six celebrity activists as they travel to 10 countries and encounter the people trying to combat issues like sex trafficking, forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality. An encore presentation.
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February 25 at 10 PMby Alison KlaymanAi Weiwei is arguably the most internationally celebrated Chinese artist of the modern era. But at heart, he’s a troublemaker who challenges the government — often done with a wink, but not without serious risk to his own freedom and personal safety.
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February 18 at 10 PMby Bonnie BoswellWhitney Young was one of the most powerful, controversial, and largely forgotten leaders of the civil rights movement, who took the fight directly to the powerful white elite, gaining allies in business and government.
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February 4 at 10 PMby Brad LichtensteinAs Goes Janesville catapults viewers to the front lines of America's debate over the future of its middle class — a debate that has become a pitched battle over unions in the normally tranquil state of Wisconsin. General Motors shuts down Janesville's century-old plant, causing mass layoffs and residents exiled in search of work. As goes Janesville, so goes America, a polarized nation losing its grasp on the American Dream. An encore presentation.
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January 28 at 10 PMby Scott ThurmanThere is an ongoing culture war raging in Texas, and it is a tempest in a textbook. The state’s Board of Education has been engaged in a pitched, years-long battle over what belongs (and doesn’t) in a public school textbook with the next generation’s education held hostage in the struggle.
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January 21 at 10 PMby Neil BerkeleyRaised in the mountains of Tennessee, Wayne White found success as one of the creators of the TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which led to more work designing some of the most arresting and iconic images in pop culture.
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January 14 at 10 PMby Byron HurtTo many African Americans, soul food is sacrament, ritual, and a key expression of cultural identity. But does this traditional cuisine do more harm to health than it soothes the soul?
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November 12 at 10 PMby Alex GibneyAcademy Award-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) presents his examination of how the gap between rich and poor Americans has become so stark, as illustrated by this famous boulevard in New York City.
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November 5 at 10 PMby Mona Eldaief, Jehane Noujaim, and Mette HeideWelcome to India's Barefoot College, founded by Bunker Roy to provide rural women living in poverty with an education that empowers them to make their communities self-reliant and sustainable. Rafea — a 30-year-old Jordanian mother of four — is traveling outside of her village for the first time to attend Barefoot's solar engineering program. Once there, she will join women like her from Guatemala, Kenya, Burkina Faso, and Colombia to learn concrete skills to change their communities.
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October 29 at 10 PMby Macky AlstonLove Free or Die is about a man whose two defining passions the world cannot reconcile: his love for God and for his partner Mark. The film is about church and state, love and marriage, faith and identity — and one man’s struggle to dispel the notion that God’s love has limits. Gene Robinson became the first openly gay elected bishop in the high church traditions of Christendom. His 2003 elevation in the New Hampshire diocese ignited a worldwide firestorm in the Anglican Communion that has threatened schism. In the face of it all, Robinson confronts those who use religion as a means of oppression, and claims a place in the church and society for all.
the National Endowment for the Arts