Blog

Judge Kholoud picking olives with her children.
Behind the Films
November, 14, 2018

Erika Cohn Unfolds a New Perception of Shari’a Law in Portrait of Remarkable Woman

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

Erika Cohn, who co-directed (with Tony Vainuku) the Emmy Award-winning Independent Lens doc In Football We Trust, went from the gridiron in Utah to the Shari'a courts of Palestine for her follow-up film The Judge, the story of the first-ever female judge…
Behind the Films
October, 29, 2018

Filmmakers Seek the Truth in Eye-Opening Story of Forced Native Child Separation

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

Before there was Dawnland, there was First Light, a shorter version of the same story about the forced separation of Native American children that helped lead to the trust necessary to tell the expanded story of Dawnland. Those two films by Boston-based…
Judge Kholoud behind desk in The Judge
July, 10, 2018

The Judge

Independent Lens

Showing Shari’a law in a way we've never seen before--through the story of the first-ever female judge in Palestine’s religious courts--The Judge is portrait of a remarkable woman who overcame a male-dominated tradition to change minds. Middle East religious courts,…
Shahin Najafi in a public performance, from When God Sleeps
Beyond the Films
March, 30, 2018

Censored Iranian Artists, Poets and Musicians Threatened with Exile

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

[Note: Please enjoy this guest essay on Iranian artists and censorships, in conjunction with the broadcast premiere of When God Sleeps, by artist and game creator Kurosh ValaNejad. See more on him at the end.] by Kurosh ValaNejad, guest contributor In…
Shahin Najafi resting before concert, in ultraviolet light
Interviews
March, 28, 2018

Filmmaker Till Schauder Had Many Sleepless Nights Telling Shahin Najafi’s Story

Craig Phillips in Interviews

The German-born, New York-based filmmaker Till Schauder's previous film The Iran Job was about an American basketball player who went with great trepidation to play professionally in Iran, a winning film about sports, politics, and the people of that country.…
Winnie Mandela in a press conference, late 80s
Interviews
January, 29, 2018

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

Craig Phillips 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…
Winnie Mandela in Johannesburg, 1992
August, 31, 2017

Winnie

Independent Lens

Most globally known as the wife of Nelson Mandela, the overshadowed Winnie Madikizela-Mandela is one of the most misunderstood and intriguing of contemporary female political figures. Her rise and seeming fall from grace in South Africa bear the hallmarks of…
Beyond the Films
May, 17, 2017

Teachers Beat the “Macho Culture” in Prisons through Art Programs

826chi in Beyond the Films

In the early 2000s, Hollywood invested in the urban fairy tale where a teacher is called into the principal’s office of a school in a low-income, broken part of town and is requested to help “build character and morale.” (Think…
Maya Angelou headscarf at fence headscarf, credit: Wayne Miller/Magnum
Lists
March, 22, 2017

Nine Great Documentaries About Women Activists

Sharon Knolle in Lists

As Women’s History Month continues, we’re shining the spotlight on women activists who faced down injustice, pioneered paths for other women and girls, or have fought heroically trying to save the world. Although the women on this list focused on…
Horst van Wächter and Niklas Frank (l-r), with Philippe Sands in background
Beyond the Films
April, 27, 2016

Blood Guilt: 12 Movies about Healing after Heinous Crimes

Sean Axmaker in Beyond the Films

Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter are the adult children of high-ranking Nazi officers. As we learn in My Nazi Legacy, their fathers sent tens of thousands of people to their deaths, and Niklas and Horst spent decades dealing with…
From No Mas Bebes, Maria Hurtado in the abandoned maternity ward of the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center
Beyond the Films
January, 29, 2016

Unwanted Sterilization and Eugenics Programs in the United States

Lisa Ko in Beyond the Films

Coerced sterilization is a shameful part of America’s history, and one doesn't have to go too far back to find examples of it. Used as a means of controlling “undesirable” populations – immigrants, people of color, poor people, unmarried mothers,…
rape protesters in India hold a candle-lit vigil
Beyond the Films
November, 13, 2015

Anti-Rape Culture Activism Takes to the Streets and Online

Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films

When you watch the harrowing, even jaw-dropping, film India's Daughter, which premieres Monday on Independent Lens [check local listings], the case of the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh will stay with you long afterwards. Anti-rape activists in the film and those…