February 22, 2021
Who Was Mr. SOUL?
Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films
If you're of a certain generation and familiar at all with the late '60s and early '70s groundbreaking public TV show SOUL!, you may recognize the name Ellis Haizlip, but…...
February 17, 2021
Listen Up: How Music Was the Heart of SOUL!
Independent Lens in Beyond the Films
by Nick Dedina Today we take it for granted that Black culture is mainstream American culture. But, before the age of hip-hop, cable TV, the internet, streaming, and mobile phones,…...
![On the set of SOUL! with Ellis Haizlip interviewing Melvin Van Peebles [Credit: Chester Higgins]](https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/MR_SOUL_stanlathan_ellishaizlip_Melvin-Van-Peebles-650x650-c-default.jpg)
February 09, 2021
How SOUL! Helped Pave the Way for Black Cultural Programming
Independent Lens in Beyond the Films
By Ade D. Adeniji Mr. SOUL! explores America’s first Black variety television show SOUL!, which ran from 1968 to 1973, and was steered by pioneering Black producer and host Ellis…...
February 20, 2020
As American as the Blues: Lynching in Film and TV
Independent Lens in Beyond the Films
By Ade Adeniji Always in Season explores the history of lynching through the mysterious 2014 death of Lennon Lacy while also looking at historical reenactments of lynching, prompting some to…...
February 20, 2020
Filmmaker Explores First Steps Toward Justice and Reconciliation
Craig Phillips in Behind the Films
Independent filmmaker Jacqueline Olive, who has worked in non-fiction filmmaking for years and co-directed and co-produced the award-winning hour-long documentary, Black to Our Roots (PBS WORLD), makes her feature documentary…...
February 19, 2020
Billie Holiday’s Searing “Strange Fruit” Still Has the Power to Startle
Independent Lens in Beyond the Films
By Nick Dedina There are often false narratives we tell ourselves so that we can simplify, and beautify, the past and erase aspects of the present that we are uncomfortable…...
January 30, 2019
The Challenge of Making a Film About Racist Relics
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Filmmaker and teacher Chico Colvard's first feature doc, Family Affair, premiered at Sundance and was the first film acquired by Oprah Winfrey for her cable channel, OWN. The searingly personal documentary explored…...
February 14, 2018
HBCU Grads Share Their Stories of Campus Life
Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films
Graduates of Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are proud alums, and in connection with the Independent Lens film Tell Them We Are Rising, which tells the 170 years—and rising—history of…...
January 10, 2018
How “I Am Not Your Negro” Filmmaker Reopened James Baldwin’s “House”
Craig Phillips in Interviews
The worldly Haitian-born filmmaker Raoul Peck and his family fled the Duvalier dictatorship in 1961 and found asylum in the Democratic Republic of Congo, before Peck finished his schooling in…...
February 11, 2016
Stanley Nelson Reveals the Real Black Panther Party
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Filmmaker Stanley Nelson, who won an Emmy for the PBS documentary The Murder of Emmett Till, three Emmys for Freedom Riders, and made an acclaimed film about Marcus Garvey, has for years…...
February 04, 2016
Breaking Barriers on Stage: African American Ballet Dancers Who Made History
Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films
As we learn in A Ballerina's Tale, Nelson George's new documentary about Misty Copeland [February 8; check local listings], Eurocentric standards of body shape, muscle tone, and skin color excluded…...
February 16, 2015
Black Family History Through a Lens
Craig Phillips in Uncategorized
A wonderful companion piece to Thomas Allen Harris's new film Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People is his Digital Diaspora Family Reunion project — a roadshow connecting communities and…...