Blog

Bertha Lewis and ACORN, in ACORN and the Firestorm
January, 18, 2018

ACORN and the Firestorm

Independent Lens

For 40 years, the controversial community organizing group ACORN sought to empower marginalized communities. Its critics, though, believed ACORN exemplified everything wrong with liberal ideals, promoting government waste and ineffective activism. These competing perceptions exploded on the national stage in…
scene from No Man's Land, member of armed standoff in oregon riding horseback with American flag
January, 18, 2018

No Man’s Land

Independent Lens

With unfettered access, filmmaker David Byars gives a detailed, on-the-ground account of the 2016 standoff between protesters occupying Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and federal authorities during a 41-day siege. No Man’s Land documents the occupation from inception to demise…
A woman demonstrates the polluted tap water in her home in West Virginia after chemical spill, in What Lies Upstream
January, 18, 2018

What Lies Upstream

Independent Lens

In the unsettling exposé What Lies Upstream, investigative filmmaker Cullen Hoback travels to West Virginia to study the unprecedented loss of clean water for over 300,000 Americans in the 2014 Elk River chemical spill. There he uncovers a shocking failure…
Iranian musician Shahin Najafi performing, in When God Sleeps
January, 18, 2018

When God Sleeps

Independent Lens

Would you risk your life for what you believe in? When God Sleeps is a rap-punk-rock documentary about Iranian musician Shahin Najafi, who is forced into hiding after hardline clerics issue a fatwa for his death, incensed by a rap…
The Force, riding in police car with Officer Cairo
Interviews
January, 16, 2018

Balancing Along the Thin Blue Line, Filmmaker Captures Police Force at an Explosive Time

Craig Phillips in Interviews

A follow-up to his acclaimed, Independent Spirit Truer than Fiction Award-winning film The Waiting Room (Independent Lens, 2013), Pete Nicks' The Force is part of a trilogy of films he's making which are ostensibly about Oakland, where he's based, but in a…
RICCARDO PRIVITERA, from Shadow World
Beyond the Films
November, 17, 2017

Meet Your Guides to the Shady Global Arms Trade of Shadow World

Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films

Shadow World is in many senses an epic film, that (as Ian McQuaid wrote in The Ransom Note) "draws together a sordid tale of corruption, violence, and greed that sprawls across decades and continents... the documentary covers the full, hideous spectrum of…
money-paper airplane fighters, in graphic for Shadow World created by Independent Lens
Beyond the Films
November, 9, 2017

Global Arms Expert Andrew Feinstein Explores Shadow World of Weapons Trade

Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films

Andrew Feinstein is one of the world's leading experts on political corruption and the global arms trade. A frequent commentator on BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and The Guardian, his writing has been published by The New York Times, Der Spiegel,…
Anti-War March Chicago, 1968 (public domain)
Lists
September, 13, 2017

12 Documentaries About the Vietnam War on the American Homefront

Noel Murray in Lists

On Sunday, September 17th, PBS will debut the latest project from Ken Burns and his frequent collaborator Lynn Novick: the ten-part, 18-hour series The Vietnam War. Just like Burns and Novick’s previous films The War (about WWII) and Prohibition (about…
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…
Police cadets inspected by Oakland Police chief, in The Force
August, 31, 2017

The Force

Independent Lens

At a powder keg moment in American policing, The Force presents a fly-on-the-wall look deep inside the long-troubled Oakland Police Department as it struggles to confront federal demands for reform, a popular uprising following events in Ferguson, Missouri, and an…
From The Negro Soldier, 1944. USA. Directed by Stuart Heisler
Lists
May, 26, 2017

Memorial Day: Docs That Capture the Human Experience of War

Sean Axmaker in Lists

There is no shortage of documentaries on war. The subject fascinates us as history, as sociology, and as drama. Some documentaries chronicle history in great detail, some grapple with the issues and forces behind the conflicts, and some flat-out propagandize.…
Alex and Jessica Sutton, doing some hunting, in Farmer/Veteran
Interviews
May, 25, 2017

Filmmakers Capture a Troubled Veteran’s Farm Life

Craig Phillips 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…