Blog

A mother and her daughter, both with light skin tone, pose together in front on a sunset. The steeple of a church is backlit behind them.
August, 16, 2022

Mama Bears

Independent Lens

They call one another “mama bears” because of the ferocity with which they fight for their children’s rights. Although they grew up as fundamentalist, evangelical Christians praying for the souls of LGTBQ+ people, these mothers are now willing to risk…
Black and white photograph of Black photographer Ernest Withers. He carries a camera while walking with a group of civil rights leaders.
July, 27, 2022

The Picture Taker

Independent Lens

From his Memphis studio, Ernest Withers' nearly 2 million images were a treasured record of Black history but his legacy was complicated by decades of secret FBI service revealed only after his death. Was he a friend of the civil…
Woman in dress dancing and smiling
May, 26, 2022

Folk Frontera

Independent Lens

Far West Texas is a place where local folklore looms as large as the landscape. Two fronteriza women—one a public radio music show host, the other a Mariachi and folklórico dancer—live in two cultures at the same time, as they…
A man in a suit with medium-dark skin tone talks to reporters while a woman with medium-dark skin tone looks on.
Behind the Films
May, 3, 2022

A Path to Forgiveness Complicated by Race and Justice: A Conversation with Claude Motley and Brad Lichtenstein

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

Filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein was nominated for a News & Documentary Emmy Award for the Independent Lens/PBS film As Goes Janesville, which was about a blue-collar town struggling to renew itself. His documentary Messwood was about a high school football team…
An Asian American student smiles at graduation, wearing a burgundy cap and gown.
Behind the Films
April, 22, 2022

Telling Asian American Stories That Resonate: Filmmaker Explores Why These High School Students Are Stressed Out

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

During her long time living in the San Francisco Bay Area, filmmaker Debbie Lum was greatly influenced by working as an editor for documentarian Spencer Nakasako. Lum as a youth was transfixed by American and World cinema, but came of…
A husband and wife look over a fence straddling a river in Brooks County, Texas.
Beyond the Films
February, 3, 2022

“Death Valley for Migrants”: The Invisible Cost of Border Crossing

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

By Ivonne Spinoza What is more important: laws or lives? This is the question at the center of the immigration debate and its ramifications.  Conversations around illegal border crossings often result in the dehumanization of migrants. These are people we’re…
A husband and wife tape a missing persons poster to a telephone pole.
Interviews
January, 10, 2022

Confronting the Agonizing Facts of Life and Death in Brooks County

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Missing in Brooks County is an eye-opening investigation set in an unforgiving region of South Texas, where migrants go missing more than anywhere else in the United States. The documentary features activist detective Eddie Canales of the South Texas Human…
A young man with dark skin tone sits on the stairs of a brick house.
Behind the Films
January, 7, 2022

Owning Up to the Dark History of America’s Housing Industry

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

Before stepping into film, Giorgio Angelini had quite the diverse path: After touring in indie rock bands for most of his 20s, he enrolled in the Master of Architecture program at Rice University in Houston, which happened to be right…
A man with medium-dark skin tone hugs a young woman with curly hair in the hallway of a school.
Behind the Films
January, 6, 2022

Filmmaker and Clemente Course Students Team Up to Reckon with Systemic Racism

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

A most unusual arrangement helped A Reckoning in Boston get to its final form. Three individuals with widely divergent backgrounds teamed up for what became a collaborative story about Clemente Course students of color reckoning with Boston's racial history. Filmmaker…
Arapaho and Shoshone children arrive off the train to Carlisle, 1881
Beyond the Films
November, 30, 2021

Three Arapaho Boys: Reclaiming Their Lives and Retelling Their Stories

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

This article was published in tandem with the Independent Lens documentary Home from School: The Children of Carlisle By Jordan Dresser When the Indian wars were coming to a close in the late 1800s, three little Arapaho boys made a…
Tribals members pay their respects at Little Chief's reburial at Sharp Nose Cemetery, Wind River Reservation, WY (From Left: Fay Ann Soldier Wolf, Mark Soldier Wolf, Hubert Friday, Nelson White, Crawford White, Yufna Soldier Wolf), 2017
Behind the Films
November, 22, 2021

Northern Arapaho Tribal Members Find Hope in the Unacknowledged History That Haunts Our Present

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

The Wyoming-based team behind Home From School: The Children of Carlisle worked together to make a powerful documentary about a tribe coming together. It is the story of Northern Arapaho taking back the stories and remains of children who were…
scene from Griffith's Birth of a Nation wherein the Klan surround a "mulatto man" (played by a white actor in blackface), in the film Birth of a Movement
November, 16, 2021

Birth of a Movement

Independent Lens

A co-presentation with WNET/Thirteen. In 1915, Boston-based African American newspaper editor and activist William M. Trotter waged a battle against D.W. Griffith’s technically groundbreaking but notoriously Ku Klux Klan-friendly The Birth of a Nation, unleashing a fight that still rages…