Blog

November, 12, 2015

India’s Daughter Director Leslee Udwin on the Rape Case that Shocked a Nation

Craig Phillips in Interviews

[caption id="attachment_11517" align="alignnone" width="813"] Candle-lit vigils were held throughout India to mourn the death of Jyoti Singh[/caption] It should go without saying that documentary filmmakers put their hearts and souls into their films, but the gender-equality activism at the core of Leslee…

October, 20, 2015

Chuck Norris vs Communism

Independent Lens

In communist Romania, thousands of Western films on bootleg VHS tapes — mostly Hollywood action movies  — were smuggled behind the Iron Curtain, opening a window into the free world. Under President Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania was culturally isolated and ideologically…

June, 15, 2015

Limited Partnership Filmmakers Commit Years to Telling Marriage Equality Story

Craig Phillips in Uncategorized

Tom Miller committed a long period of his life — 14 years — to his film Limited Partnership, and it became a true labor of love, appropriate for what is at its very heart a love story. The film traces…

February, 21, 2013

Alison Klayman on Filming Ai Weiwei

826chi in Uncategorized

We sat down with filmmaker Alison Klayman to talk about the joys and challenges of filming China's most famous artist and dissident, Ai Weiwei. Her film, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. What impact do you hope this film will have? I…

January, 10, 2013

‘Green Book’ Helped Keep African Americans Safe on the Road

826chi in Beyond the Films

In Soul Food Junkies, filmmaker Byron Hurt briefly describes what it used to be like for African Americans to travel in the United States. He talks about how blacks would take along boxed lunches in order to avoid being turned away…

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…

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…