Blog

A man with dark skin tone holds a phone to his ear. He looks anxious.
Behind the Films
January, 14, 2020

Filmmaker Accepts the Call to Tell Story of a Father and Son Divided

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

Filmmaker Eunice Lau, who is originally from Singapore (and boy does she have a story to tell you here about the experience of showing her film back home), was once a journalist at Al Jazeera Network. She has a penchant…
A vintage television set screen shows an image of a Black woman's face. She is wearing an orange blazer.
December, 20, 2019

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

Independent Lens

A fiercely intelligent, radical activist who became a fabulously wealthy recluse in her later years, Marion Stokes was dedicated to furthering and protecting the truth — so much so that she recorded American television 24 hours a day for over…
Lance Gumbs at the Shinnecock Pow Wow
Beyond the Films
November, 15, 2019

For Tribal Communities, Battle Over Land Is Nothing New

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

By Jordan Dresser Sometimes, two people can look out of the same window and see two very different things.  This outlook sprang to my mind while watching Treva Wurmfeld’s Conscience Point, which tells the story of the Shinnecock Indian Nation's fight to…
Shinnecock Tribal trustee Lance Gumps at the US Open
Interviews
November, 14, 2019

In Opulent Hamptons Filmmaker Asks, Whose Land Is it Anyway?

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Treva Wurmfeld was named one Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film a few years back and made her mark first with her festival award-winning film Shepard and Dark about iconic American playwright Sam Shepard's lifelong friendship with reclusive writer…
Sasha Neulinger as a child, black and white photo
November, 8, 2019

Rewind

Independent Lens

Made up of home video footage that reveals a long-kept secret, Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s Rewind is a brave and wrenching look at his childhood and his journey to reconcile his past. By probing the gap between image and reality, the…
Phillip Morris hugs his wife when reunited at Minneapolis airport.
Interviews
November, 6, 2019

Following the Journey of Interpreters We Left Behind

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Filmmakers Andrés Caballero and Sofian Khan's previous feature-length collaboration Gaucho del Norte, which made its broadcast premiere on public television’s America ReFramed series, followed the journey of a Patagonian immigrant sheepherder recruited to work in the American West. With The Interpreters, the duo took…
A man with dark skin tone wears a puffer jacket and a beanie as he walks around a snowy park.
November, 1, 2019

Accept the Call

Independent Lens

Twenty-five years after Yusuf Abdurahman left Somalia as a refugee to begin his life anew in Minnesota — which has the largest population of Somalis in the United States — his worst fear is realized when his 19-year-old-son Zacharia is…
Decade of Fire, kids skating in the Bronx 1970s
Behind the Films
October, 30, 2019

Decade of Fire Filmmakers Change the Narrative About the South Bronx

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

The three-headed team as it were, of co-directors Vivian Vázquez Irizarry and Gretchen Hildebran, and producer Julia Steele Allen, each brought something different and special to the table in the making of the film Decade of Fire, which tells the…
Filmmaker Sergio Rapu walks his infant son down a hillside on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). In the background, a single moai statue stands in the sun.
October, 21, 2019

Eating Up Easter

Independent Lens

More than just a picture-perfect postcard of iconic stone statues, Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is a microcosm of a planet in flux. Directed by native Rapa Nui filmmaker Sergio Mata’u Rapu, Eating Up Easter explores the challenges…
A solitary man with light skin tone stands on a beach on a cloudy day, leaning against a lifeguard stand.
October, 21, 2019

The Hottest August

Independent Lens

The Hottest August presents an up-close and personal look at New Yorkers’ growing concerns over a variety of societal changes, from rising rents to marching white nationalists, during one sweltering month in 2017. Raising the specter of our changing climate…
woman holding a red sign that reads La Jails are the largest mental health institution in the country you can't get well in a cell
September, 13, 2019

Bedlam

Independent Lens

To get to the bottom of the current mental health crisis in the U.S., psychiatrist and documentarian Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D. chronicles the personal, poignant stories of those suffering from serious mental illness, including his own family, to bring to…
Panther Bobby Lee speaking
August, 15, 2019

The First Rainbow Coalition

Independent Lens

In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party, notably led by the charismatic Fred Hampton, began to form alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city, including the Latinx group the Young Lords Organization and…