Blog

Unrest signature image with Jen Brea getting a test on her brainwaves, including IL audience award graphic now
August, 31, 2017

Unrest

Independent Lens

Filmmaker Jennifer Brea was a Harvard PhD student soon to be engaged when she was struck down by a mysterious fever that left her bedridden. As her illness progressed she lost even the ability to sit in a wheelchair, yet…
Alex and Jessica Sutton, doing some hunting, in Farmer/Veteran
Interviews
May, 25, 2017

Filmmakers Capture a Troubled Veteran’s Farm Life

Independent Lens in Interviews

Farmer/Veteran was made by a trio of talented young filmmakers: Alix Blair documented the lives of women in southwestern Uganda for her Master’s work at Duke University; Jeremy Lange has been a photographer and cinematographer whose past film and video work…
National Bird director Sonia Kennebeck
Interviews
April, 28, 2017

Sonia Kennebeck Makes Film About the Human Cost of Drone Wars and Whistleblowing

Independent Lens in Interviews

Sonia Kennebeck's film National Bird, which was executive produced by renowned filmmakers Errol Morris and Wim Wenders, takes a risk just by making it in the first place. It tells the story of the United States drone war, from a very…
Coral Reef, in bluish tint, credit: USFWS/Jerry Reid
Lists
April, 21, 2017

Earth Day Watch List: 17 Films About Sustainability and Climate Change

Jennie Z. Rose in Lists

We count on indie filmmakers to sniff out the conspicuous absences in mainstream media. Journalist and investigative reporter Amy Goodman once said, "The role of independent media is to go to where the silence is." To environmentalists and scientists, the…
Marijuana seeds
Beyond the Films
April, 20, 2017

Growing Industry: Why Weed Seeds Are Giving Way to Pot Clones

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

In the Independent Lens doc SEED: The Untold Story, biodiversity evangelists travel the globe in search of as many seed varieties as they can bank in their vaults before they disappear. As we learn in the film, 94% of agricultural…
(From the film SEED) Heirloom corn seed is one of lost seeds we have reclaimed and is being saved by farmers across the country.
Beyond the Films
April, 13, 2017

Banking on Seeds: Rare, Diverse, and Endangered

Jennie Z. Rose in Beyond the Films

When National Geographic Magazine reported that about 94% of the world’s vegetable seeds circa 1903 are now missing from the Earth, Taggart Siegel and Jon Betz promptly started work on a feature-length documentary about the seed saving movement. The product…
Women sort seeds from vegetables at a farm, fron SEED
Interviews
April, 12, 2017

Filmmakers Share the Roots of their Seed Documentary

Independent Lens in Interviews

With SEED: The Untold Story, filmmakers Taggart Siegel and Jon Betz complete a trilogy of sorts, after The Real Dirt on Farmer John and The New York Times Critic Pick Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us,…
Mark Barden's son Daniel Barden races the school bus in Newtown
Interviews
April, 3, 2017

Kim A. Snyder Tells Newtown Families’ Deeply Intimate Story

Independent Lens in Interviews

Filmmaker Kim Snyder is no stranger to having to patiently and empathetically ingratiate herself with a community. Her film Welcome to Shelbyville, which was nationally broadcast on Independent Lens, spent time in a small Tennessee town where its residents — whites and African Americans, Latinos…
The new Sandy Hook school (Robert Benson Photography, courtesy Svigals + Partners)
Beyond the Films
March, 31, 2017

Healing Places: Rebuilding After a Community Tragedy

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

"The only thing tragedy gives us is the opportunity to rebuild our life." -writer Paulo Coelho The film Newtown asks, "What remains after all is lost?" Some have said that it is much harder to rebuild oneself after experiencing an unconscionable…
Nicky Nuke graphic by artist Peter Kuper
Interviews
January, 6, 2017

Containment Filmmakers Go into the Future to Read the Warning Signs

Independent Lens in Interviews

Harvard professors and filmmakers Peter Galison and Robb Moss have been collaborating for a decade: first, in co-teaching a course, bringing student filmmakers into scientific laboratories to think about the way the real work of technology, medicine, and science could…
Will Bonsall, seed saver and organic farmer holds endangered corn seeds on his farm and seed bank in Industry, Maine.
November, 2, 2016

SEED: The Untold Story

Independent Lens

Worshiped and treasured since the dawn of humankind, few things on Earth are as miraculous and vital as seeds. SEED: The Untold Story follows passionate seed keepers intent on protecting our 12,000 year-old food legacy. In the last century, 94%…
Army veteran Alex Sutton holds a baby bird in Farmer Veteran
August, 23, 2016

Farmer/Veteran

Independent Lens

Home from three combat tours in Iraq, Alex Sutton forges a new identity as a farmer, hatching chicks and raising goats on 43 acres in rural North Carolina. Farmer/Veteran shows Alex diving into life on the farm with his new…