As far as I’m concerned, soccer is a year-round sport. I can find a footie game on the telly from somewhere in the world anytime I want, but the World Cup is the every-four-year event that makes even superficial fans take a keen interest. This year’s World Cup is happening in Russia, and although my …
Overturning Expectations Alongside the Women Warriors of Ms. Veteran America
Long a successful film producer, Lysa Heslov, along with her husband, Oscar-winning producer/writer/director Grant Heslov, founded Children Mending Hearts ten years ago, a non-profit dedicated to empowering disadvantaged youth in the U.S. through educational and humanities programs that build empathy and global citizenry. She’s produced cult indie films like Attention Shoppers, Bug, and Hank Azaria’s …
Documentarians Meet the Real People Behind a Media Firestorm
Documentarians Reuben Atlas and Sam Pollard picked a hefty, complex, but as it turned out incredibly timely subject to collaborate on. The film ACORN and the Firestorm looks at the downfall of the huge community organizing non-profit ACORN, brought about by right-wing journalists’ covert video sting, and the ensuing media frenzy. Sam Pollard has made …
Takeovers and Occupations: A Survey of American Mini-Rebellions and Political Stands
In the Independent Lens No Man’s Land, we get a fly on the wall sense of the tense armed takeover and 41-day standoff at Oregon’s Malheur Wildlife Refuge, led by rancher Ammon Bundy and his militia. Before it was all over, 26 people were arrested and charged with felony conspiracy against the government for their roles …
Documentarian Ventures into the “No Man’s Land” of Malheur Takeover
Documentarian David Garrett Byars is making his feature film debut with No Man’s Land, but he’s made short films before. including Recapture, a short documentary chronicling the attempt of right-wing activists to reclaim the federally-managed Recapture Canyon in southern Utah. Clearly that experience informed–and provides a nice segue–to No Man’s Land, which provides a tense fly-on-the-wall …
Director Finds Real Life Superheroes with “Conviction”
Filmmaker Jamie Meltzer, also the program director of the MFA program in Documentary Film at Stanford University, has made acclaimed films about a wide collection of topics, from song-poems to Nollywood (Nigerian) film to FBI informants, but each tells a very human and compelling story. And his new film, the Tribeca Special Jury Award-winning True …
Five Questions with Nick Offerman about Wendell Berry
Look & See: Wendell Berry’s Kentucky co-producer Nick Offerman, an actor of many an indie film and of course on TV’s Parks & Recreation, Fargo, and author of Paddle Your Own Canoe: One Man’s Fundamentals for Delicious Living, as well as gifted woodworker and man of many other talents, stopped by to answer five questions for us …
Laura Dunn Draws From Wendell Berry for Look at Rural America
Laura Dunn’s first feature documentary, The Unforeseen, executive produced by Robert Redford and Terrence Malick, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, aired on the Sundance Channel, and was called “a poetic and high-minded meditation on American developers’ manifest destiny and the cancer it introduces into the natural world,” by critic David Edelstein. It explored a …
Filmmaker Cullen Hoback Digs Into Political Cover-Ups and Chemical Spills in Americans Water
Filmmaker Cullen Hoback’s previous film Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013), a humorous but chilling documentary about the erosion of online privacy and what info governments and corporations are legally taking from citizens each day, has become (or remains) timely again. Hoback’s new film, What Lies Upstream, promises to remain relevant for some time as …
Shoes Wisely: Stacey Tenenbaum Shines a Light on an Age-Old Profession
Award-winning filmmaker Stacey Tenenbaum co-created a critically acclaimed series in Canada, The Beat, which followed a team of beat police officers patrolling the streets of Downtown Vancouver. Exchanging the police beat for shiny feet for her new film, Tenenbaum’s The Art of the Shine [premiering on Independent Lens Monday, April 9; check local listings], travels from New York City …
The Art of the Sneaker
One of the many quiet revelations for me in the documentary The Art of the Shine is that despite being in what seems like a casual and disposable culture, many people these days actually still take great pains to care for their shoes, including partaking in the ancient art of shoe shining. Whether brown leather …
Filmmaker Till Schauder Had Many Sleepless Nights Telling Shahin Najafi’s Story
The German-born, New York-based filmmaker Till Schauder‘s previous film The Iran Job was about an American basketball player who went with great trepidation to play professionally in Iran, a winning film about sports, politics, and the people of that country. It makes for a good segue to his new film, which is in many ways …