Blog

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…
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…
May, 25, 2010

A Village Called Versailles

Independent Lens

More than three decades ago, Vietnamese refugees began to settle in Versailles, a then-isolated community in eastern New Orleans. By the early 2000s, this working-class enclave was home to 8,000 residents. But although the community had accomplished material successes, it…
March, 23, 2010

Lost Souls (Animas Perdidas)

Independent Lens

A young Latina filmmaker chronicles the emotional journey of her uncle, a U.S. military vet deported to Mexico, and uncovers the secrets of her family’s past, when they had to start over and forge new lives in an unfamiliar “homeland.”
A closeup of a man standing in a Catholic church
December, 29, 2009

Scenes from a Parish

Independent Lens

Lawrence, Massachusetts is a New England textile town that was founded by Irish immigrants fleeing the Great Potato Famine. Subsequent waves of immigrants from Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, and Canada flooded in through the decades, providing labor for the wool…
A group of men and women in the 1920s pose for the camera
April, 28, 2009

At Home in Utopia

Independent Lens

In the mid-1920s, thousands of immigrant Jewish garment workers catapulted themselves out of the urban slums and ghettos by pooling their resources and building cooperatively owned and run apartment complexes in the Bronx. Adjacent to the newly opened subway corridor…
May, 27, 2008

New Year Baby

Independent Lens

Born in a Thai refugee camp on Cambodian New Year, filmmaker Socheata Poeuv grew up in the United States never knowing that her family had survived the Khmer Rouge genocide. In New Year Baby, she embarks on a journey to…
May, 20, 2008

Dream in Doubt

Independent Lens

Four days after the 9/11 attacks, Balbir Singh Sodhi was gunned down at his Phoenix area gas station by a man named Frank Roque. To Roque, Balbir Sodhi’s beard and turban — articles of his Sikh faith — falsely evoked…
A man stands in front of a muddy tropical field, in front of a one-room cement structure
May, 15, 2007

Sentenced Home

Independent Lens

Putting a human face on controversial immigration policy, Sentenced Home follows three young Cambodian Americans through the deportation process. Raised in inner city Seattle, they pay an unbearable price for mistakes they made as teenagers. Caught between their tragic pasts…
Jimmy Mirikitani
May, 8, 2007

The Cats of Mirikitani

Independent Lens

“Make art not war” is Jimmy Mirikitani’s motto. This 80-year-old Japanese American artist was born in Sacramento and raised in Hiroshima, but by 2001 he is living on the streets of New York with the twin towers of the World…
A man with a beard wearing a dark grey turban and a checkered shirt stands in front of an SUV in the desert
May, 9, 2006

American Made

Independent Lens

“I wanted to tell the story of a father and a son,” says Writer/Director Sharat Raju. So begins American Made, a conflict between a father and a son, a reflection on assimilation versus identity, faith versus compromise. As the sun…
November, 29, 2005

Maid in America

Independent Lens

Meet Telma, Eva, and Judith, three undocumented workers who toil as cooks, housekeepers, and even surrogate mothers — often at the expense of their own families — as they attempt to pursue their American dreams.