Blog

John Coltrane in concert at Newport Jazz Festival 1966
June, 28, 2017

Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary

Independent Lens

Season premiere! Set against the social, political and cultural landscape of the times, Chasing Trane brings saxophone great John Coltrane to life, as a man and an artist. The film is the definitive look at the boundary-shattering musician whose influence continues…
Beyond the Films
May, 17, 2017

Teachers Beat the “Macho Culture” in Prisons through Art Programs

826chi in Beyond the Films

In the early 2000s, Hollywood invested in the urban fairy tale where a teacher is called into the principal’s office of a school in a low-income, broken part of town and is requested to help “build character and morale.” (Think…
Guard tower at an American prison
Beyond the Films
May, 5, 2017

The Prison Economy: How Do Prisons Affect the Places We Live?

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

The Independent Lens film The Prison in Twelve Landscapes examines the effect prisons have on the communities around them in both positive and negative ways. Prisons can stimulate the economy and create jobs, but they also loom monolithically over our lives.…
Interviews
March, 23, 2017

Ovarian Psycos Filmmakers Follow the Ovas Bike Brigade in East L.A.

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Ovarian Psycos brought together filmmakers Joanna Sokolowski, who co-produced the Emmy® Award-winning HBO documentary Very Semi-Serious (2015), about New Yorker cartoonists, and Kate Trumbull-LaValle, an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker who first began in the field of social justice media as an educator…
Maya Angelou headscarf at fence headscarf, credit: Wayne Miller/Magnum
Lists
March, 22, 2017

Nine Great Documentaries About Women Activists

Sharon Knolle in Lists

As Women’s History Month continues, we’re shining the spotlight on women activists who faced down injustice, pioneered paths for other women and girls, or have fought heroically trying to save the world. Although the women on this list focused on…
Elle in full uniform in The Invisible War stands at the Vietnam War Memorial
Film History
March, 8, 2017

Meet the Trailblazers of Documentary Activism

Sean Axmaker in Film History

We think of the cinema of activism in documentary filmmaking as a relatively modern phenomenon, something first awakened in the 1960s and 1970s and popularized by the likes of Michael Moore and Laura Poitras and Alex Gibney. But the success…
Lists
February, 13, 2017

History or Hate: America’s Controversial Monuments to White Supremacy

826chi in Lists

The thing about claiming territory and property is that it takes up space, and taking up space literally makes a huge statement; it becomes a platform for discussing who built something there, and why. So when black musician Daryl Davis…
From Prison in Six Landscapes, a man and boy play chess outside a prison
August, 26, 2016

The Prison in Twelve Landscapes

Independent Lens

In the United States there are 2.2 million people in prison, up from only 300,000 forty years ago, yet for most Americans, prisons have never felt more distant or more out of sight. A cinematic journey through a series of…
Masked member of Ovarian Psycos bike brigade
August, 23, 2016

Ovarian Psycos

Independent Lens

Ovarian Psycos is about a new generation of fierce, unapologetic and feminist women of color from the Eastside of Los Angeles who confront injustice, build community, and redefine identity through a raucous, irreverently named bicycle crew: The Ovarian Psycos Cycle…
the three men of True Conviction pose in suits and hats on an industrial site
August, 23, 2016

True Conviction

Independent Lens

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” - MLK There's a new detective agency in Dallas, run by three exonerated men who all spent decades in prison. Their mission: to free other innocent people still behind bars. After serving…
Filmmaker Dawn Porter
Behind the Films
June, 13, 2016

Dawn Porter Unlocks the Story of Laws Targeting Abortion Providers

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

Filmmaker Dawn Porter has shown a willingness to probe uncomfortable truths and untold stories in the past. LA Times critic Robert Lloyd called her acclaimed Independent Lens film Spies of Mississippi "eye-opening" for its look at the ways civil rights activists were spied…
The Supreme Court of the United States, including the late Antonin Scalia (there are currently 8 justices until a 9th is confirmed).
Beyond the Films
June, 9, 2016

Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt: What the Supreme Court Is Deciding in the Most Important Abortion Ruling in Decades (Updated 2022)

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

[caption id="attachment_13448" align="alignnone" width="1920"] The Supreme Court of the United States, including the late Antonin Scalia (there are currently eight justices until a ninth is confirmed).[/caption] By Marcia Coyle @MarciaCoyle Guest Contributor, National Law Journal By the end of this month,…