Blog

Interviews
February, 21, 2018

Filmmaker Theo Anthony’s Ratty Exploration of Urban Segregation

Independent Lens in Interviews

[pullquote]"It’s cool to watch younger audiences watch the film, because they just get the filmic language right away. It’s a film that feels more like an Instagram story than a traditional documentary."[/pullquote]In the New York Times critics' pick review of…
An HBCU student tears up at his graduation, from Tell Them We Are Rising
Beyond the Films
February, 14, 2018

HBCU Grads Share Their Stories of Campus Life

Independent Lens 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 HBCUs, we found a few who were happy to tell…
Wooden Figure Lying On Floor Watching Television, By Andrey_Popov, via Shutterstock
Lists
February, 12, 2018

Beyond Romance: Searching for the Meaning of Love on Screen

Independent Lens in Lists

Although there are as many ways to love as there are people to do the loving, we are trained from an early age to value the pair-bond above all else. The tension and release of romantic love (and its loss)…
Miriam Makeba (r) with Dizzy Gillespie in France 1991
Beyond the Films
January, 30, 2018

For “Winnie”: Anti-Apartheid Songs of Protest

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1280"] Miriam Makeba and Dizzy Gillespie, 1991[/caption] By Sarah Bardeen, guest contributor Modern South Africa was forged in apartheid. The struggle defined life for generations of South Africans, and music was crucial in that struggle. Black South…
Winnie Mandela in a press conference, late 80s
Interviews
January, 29, 2018

“Winnie” Filmmaker Gives a New Perspective on Anti-Apartheid Activist Winnie Mandela

Independent Lens in Interviews

Filmmaker Pascale Lamche took on the enormous but important challenge of documenting Winnie Mandela's story, a narrative, as she discovered, that was slightly skewed in the mind of many across the world. As she said to Filmmaker Magazine, the perception…
Tell Them We Are Rising filmmakers Marco Williams and Stanley Nelson (l-r)
Interviews
January, 26, 2018

Filmmakers Marco Williams and Stanley Nelson Tell an Essential Chapter of American History in Story of HBCUs

Independent Lens in Interviews

Tell Them We Are Rising, which premieres on Independent Lens on PBS Monday, February 19 at 9 pm [check local listings], covers the rich history of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) from before the end of slavery through a…
Dylan with filmmaker Nanfu Wang reflected at right, shooting I Am Another You
Interviews
January, 24, 2018

How a Chinese Filmmaker Ended up in Florida with a Drifter from Utah

Independent Lens in Interviews

Nanfu Wang was a student at NYU when she went exploring America, which found her in Florida staying at a hostel. There she encountered a young drifter named Dylan, whom she found fascinating enough to start filming, capturing his experiences…
art for Art of the Shine, featuring a shoe shiners hand
January, 18, 2018

The Art of the Shine

Independent Lens

You might pass them on the sidewalk, at the mall or at the airport. They’re the shoe shiners, purveying an old school trade that seems like something out of the Mad Men era, out of step with our fast-paced, disposable…
Iranian musician Shahin Najafi performing, in When God Sleeps
January, 18, 2018

When God Sleeps

Independent Lens

Would you risk your life for what you believe in? When God Sleeps is a rap-punk-rock documentary about Iranian musician Shahin Najafi, who is forced into hiding after hardline clerics issue a fatwa for his death, incensed by a rap…
James Baldwin on the Dick Cavett Show
Interviews
January, 10, 2018

How “I Am Not Your Negro” Filmmaker Reopened James Baldwin’s “House”

Independent Lens 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 the United States, France, and Germany. Currently living in both France and…
Armistead Maupin at typewriter in the 1970s, from Untold Tales
Beyond the Films
December, 18, 2017

Take the Armistead Maupin and Tales of the City Pop Quiz!

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

How much do you know about Armistead Maupin and about his beloved Tales of the City series? Are you a Maupin superfan? Take this quiz we created for both for longtime fans and those who are newer to Maupin and Tales to…
Filmmaker Jennifer Kroot interviews Maupin at steps to the real-life inspiration for Barbary Lane in Tales of the City
Interviews
December, 15, 2017

From North Carolina to San Francisco: Jennifer Kroot Tells the Tales of Maupin

Independent Lens in Interviews

Jennifer Kroot brings a background in underground filmmaking to her documentaries and uses that sensibility to create surprises within her stories. The San Francisco-based filmmaker first caught the eye of writer Armistead Maupin when he saw her documentary To Be…