By Marlen Komar In the early 1970s, a group of Boston secretaries came together to improve the working conditions in their offices. Tired of low pay, lack of advancement opportunities, and constant sexual harassment, they created the group 9to5, which would eventually grow into a nationwide revolution that would change the American workplace for women. … READ MORE

Julia Reichert and her filmmaking partner and life partner Steve Bognar, have been making documentaries for a long while. Most recently, in 2020, the team won the Academy Award for American Factory, about the reopening of a shuttered auto factory in Ohio. But their incredible dossier goes back to the 1970s — Julia’s first film, … READ MORE

In some ways, you’d think Jared Leto, Oscar-winning actor, movie star, and frontman for Platinum-selling band (with his brother Shannon) 30 Seconds to Mars, would not need much of an introduction. But now you can add another hat, with a new, heartfelt project for Leto, which is in some ways as ambitious as anything he’s … READ MORE

Filmmaker Yu Gu was born in Chongqing, China, raised in Vancouver, Canada, and found her way to the University of Southern California film program. Her films, like the feature documentary that she co-directed Who is Arthur Chu?, which won two festival grand jury awards and was broadcast on WORLD Channel in 2018, explore intersections between … READ MORE

By Nadine Dornieden The $100+ billion video game industry is big. So big, in fact, that it dwarfs both the film and music industry combined. Gaming as a hobby has become much more popular every year since the 1990s, after Nintendo paved the way with their seminal game Super Mario Bros. for the Nintendo Entertainment System, … READ MORE

The upcoming slate of films airing on Independent Lens on PBS starts in January with seven highly-acclaimed documentaries that reflect the ever-changing nature of the United States, highlighting women who led the way in workplace sexism —in offices, NFL playing fields, and police forces — as well as telling the stories of a trailblazer in … READ MORE

Erika Cohn has made powerful documentaries for Independent Lens before and is no stranger to telling intimate, surprising stories in tense environments: her Peabody Award-winning film The Judge showed Shari’a law in a new light to Western eyes, through the story of the first-ever female judge in Palestine’s religious courts; and the Utah native filmmaker … READ MORE

The free PBS Video App is now available to download for iOS and AppleTV, Android and Android TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung Smart TV, and Chromecast. Stream the latest Independent Lens documentaries and your favorite PBS shows, create the perfect watchlist, connect with your local station, and more — anytime, anywhere. You can watch … READ MORE

In some ways Jonathan Scott should need no introduction—or so you’d think as co-host with his brother Drew of the hugely popular HGTV shows Property Brothers and Brother vs. Brother, which air in more than 160 countries, and as a best-selling author, magazine co-founder, Billboard-charting recording artist, and social media influencer. But there’s another side … READ MORE

By Ivonne Spinoza “Producing films often translates to putting out fires before they start, so I suppose this gets you ready for parenting in a pandemic, generally speaking, but did I feel prepared for the reality of 2020? That’s a hard no.”—Nico Opper COVID has revealed and intensified all kinds of challenges in our lives … READ MORE

What does “representation” mean in the midst of a historically tense election year?  In her film Represent, filmmaker Hillary Bachelder sought to show the universal struggle to redefine repressive expectations for women in politics with a look at three women running for office in a male-dominated world. Originally from Maine, Bachelder went to Chicago for … READ MORE

By Lennlee Keep What do Pepe the Frog, the Spanish Inquisition, the blinking guy, the French Revolution, concern for the environment, and the Third Reich all have in common? These are all ideas that spread until they became pervasive throughout a culture or country. According to evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, they are also all cultural … READ MORE