Blog

Archival photo of ACT UP AIDS activists embracing during a protest.
June, 14, 2012

We Were Here

Independent Lens

We Were Here documents the arrival in San Francisco of what was then called the "Gay Plague" in the early 1980s. It illuminates the profound personal and community issues raised by the AIDS epidemic, as well as the broad political…
Angela Davis with Afro and orange sweater.
February, 9, 2012

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975

Independent Lens

For three decades, the film canisters sat undisturbed in a cellar beneath the Swedish National Broadcasting Company. Inside was roll after roll of startlingly fresh and candid 16mm footage shot in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, all…
Daisy Bates marches with a crowd of supporters carrying signs of support.
February, 2, 2012

Daisy Bates

Independent Lens

In 1957, Daisy Bates became a household name when she fought for the right of nine black students to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Bates's public support culminated in a constitutional crisis — pitting a…
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January, 30, 2012

Filmmaker Discusses Daisy Bates and Black History Month

Independent Lens in Uncategorized

Independent Lens is kicking off Black History Month this week with Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock. We caught up with filmmaker Sharon La Cruise to talk about how she came to the project, and why so many people…
Neslon Mandela and Oliver Tambo smile and wave.
January, 12, 2012

Have You Heard From Johannesburg

Independent Lens

Have You Heard From Johannesburg is a five-part chronicle, airing over three weeks, of the history of the global anti-apartheid movement that took on South Africa’s entrenched apartheid regime and its international supporters who considered South Africa an ally in…
Disability rights activists assemble under an American flag with its stars arranged in the shape of a wheelchair.
October, 27, 2011

Lives Worth Living

Independent Lens

People with disabilities are one of the largest minorities in the United States. But for most of American history, they occupied a sub-class of millions without access to everyday things most citizens take for granted: schools, apartment buildings, public transportation,…
Young boy raises his arms against a golden sunset.
June, 14, 2011

Two Spirits

Independent Lens

Two Spirits interweaves the tragic story of a mother’s loss of her son with a revealing look at the largely unknown history of a time when the world wasn’t simply divided into male and female and many Native American cultures…
March, 29, 2011

Pushing the Elephant

Independent Lens

In the late 1990s, Rose Mapendo was imprisoned with her family during violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her harrowing experience included the nighttime arrest of her entire family by government agents, the execution of her husband, the…
February, 8, 2011

When I Rise

Independent Lens

A gifted black music student at the University of Texas is thrust into a civil-rights storm that changes her life forever. Barbara Smith Conrad is cast in an opera to co-star with a white male classmate, fueling a racist backlash…
A Haitian boy stands in a water-logged slum.
January, 11, 2011

Children of Haiti

Independent Lens

In the midst of Haiti’s lush mountains and historical relics, hundreds of thousands of orphaned and abandoned children wander the streets day and night. Known as the Sanguine (“Soulless”) and forgotten by their own people, they struggled for survival even…
November, 9, 2010

The Longoria Affair

Independent Lens

Sixty years ago in Three Rivers, Texas, the only funeral home in town refused to hold a wake for Felix Longoria, a decorated Mexican American soldier killed in battle during World War II. Longoria’s widow was told, simply, “The whites…
Hannah Senesh (Meri Roth) and her mother Catherine (Marcela Nohýnková) circle a prison courtyard
April, 13, 2010

Blessed Is the Match

Independent Lens

At age 22, Hannah Senesh parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe in an effort to save the Jews of Hungary. As a poet and diarist, she left behind a body of work that has inspired generations. Narrated by Academy Award nominee Joan…