Watch Independent Lens (1999) Online!
This acclaimed Emmy Award-winning anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions of their independent producers and featuring unforgettable stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history.
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Episode 1 - Wham! Bam! Islam!
Release Date: 2011-10-13Episode Synopsis: Season 13 premieres with new host Mary-Louise Parker introducing "Wham! Bam! Islam," about the challenges involving "The 99," a comic book about Muslim superheroes created by Kuwaiti... more
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Episode 2 - Donor Unknown
Release Date: 2011-10-20Episode Synopsis: "Donor Unknown" charts the story of 20-year-old JoEllen Marsh, who was raised by two mothers in Pennsylvania, as she searches for her sperm-donor father, known only as "Donor 150." T... more
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Episode 3 - Lives Worth Living
Release Date: 2011-10-27"Lives Worth Living" tells the story of the disability rights movement in America, which began after WWII when disabled veterans returned home; and culminated in 1990 with the passage of the Americans... more
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Episode 4 - Deaf Jam
Release Date: 2011-11-03"Deaf Jam" chronicles the experiences of Aneta Brodski, a deaf Israeli teen living in New York, as she moves from American Sign Language poetry, where body movements convey meaning, into the spoken-wo... more
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Episode 5 - We Still Live Here -- as Nutayunean
Release Date: 2011-11-17Anne Makepeace's "We Still Live Here—As Nutayunean" tells the story of linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird's work to resurrect the long-forgotten language of the Wampanoag (the Native Americans who saved... more
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Episode 6 - The Woodmans
Release Date: 2011-12-22"The Woodmans" charts the short life of influential photographer Francesca Woodman, who took her own life in 1981 at the age of 22. The profile includes comments from her parents, artists George and B... more
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Episode 7 - These Amazing Shadows
Release Date: 2011-12-29"These Amazing Shadows" focuses on the National Film Registry, an eclectic collection of movies considered to be "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the National Film Preservati... more
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Episode 8 - Have You Heard From Johannesburg: Road to Resistance
Release Date: 2012-01-12The five-part "Have You Heard From Johannesburg?," a history of the global anti-apartheid movement, opens with "Road to Resistance," which recalls the 1948 implementation of government-sanctioned disc... more
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Episode 9 - Have You Heard From Johannesburg: The New Generation
Release Date: 2012-01-12Part 2 of 5 of "Have You Heard From Johannesburg?" examines "The New Generation," and its effort to overturn South Africa's apartheid system. Included: the refusal of western nations to boycott South ... more
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Episode 10 - Have You Heard From Johannesburg: From Selma to Soweto
Release Date: 2012-01-19Part 3 of 5 of "Have You Heard From Johannesburg?," "From Selma to Soweto," details the anti-apartheid movement in the U.S., where in 1986 legislation was passed that imposed sanctions on South Africa... more
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Episode 11 - Have You Heard From Johannesburg: The Bottom Line
Release Date: 2012-01-19Part 4 of 5 of "Have You Heard From Johannesburg?, The Bottom Line," details how international grassroots campaigns to boycott and divest from companies that did business in South Africa pressured tho... more
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Episode 12 - Have You Heard From Johannesburg: Free at Last
Release Date: 2012-01-26The conclusion of "Have You Heard From Johannesburg?, Free at Last," recalls the end stage of South Africa's apartheid system, when internal and external pressures forced the government to the negotia... more
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Episode 13 - Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock
Release Date: 2012-02-02Daisy Bates was a complex, unconventional, and largely forgotten heroine of the civil rights movement who led the charge to desegregate the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 19... more
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Episode 14 - The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
Release Date: 2012-02-09The Black Power Mixtape examines the evolution of the Black Power Movement in the black community and Diaspora from 1967 to 1975. The film combines music, startling 16mm footage (lying undiscovered in... more
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Episode 15 - More Than A Month
Release Date: 2012-02-16Shukree Hassan Tilghman, a 29-year-old African-American filmmaker, is on a cross-country campaign to end Black History Month. Through this tongue-in-cheek journey, “More Than a Month” investigates wha... more
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Episode 16 - You're Looking at Me Like I Live Here and I Don't
Release Date: 2012-03-30In Danville, California, Lee Gorewitz wanders on a soul-searching odyssey through her Alzheimer’s & Dementia care unit. Confined by the limits of her physical boundaries, she scavenges for reminde... more
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Episode 17 - Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey
Release Date: 2012-04-05Every day, millions tune in to Sesame Street to see one of the world’s most adored and recognizable characters — a furry red three-and-a-half year-old monster named Elmo. Yet, with all of Elmo’s fame,... more
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Episode 18 - When the Drum Is Beating
Release Date: 2012-04-12Interweaves the extraordinary story of Septentrional’s six decades of creativity with the history of Haiti. How did the country go from being the first free black republic with a huge wealth of natu... more
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Episode 19 - Revenge of the Electric Car
Release Date: 2012-04-19Revenge follows four entrepreneurs from 2007 through the end of 2010 as they fight to bring the electric car back to the world market in the midst of a global recession. The protagonists are Bob Lutz ... more
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Episode 20 - Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison
Release Date: 2012-04-26Millions of bison once roamed the Great Plains. Can this nearly extinct icon of the American West make a 21st century comeback?
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Episode 21 - Circo
Release Date: 2012-05-03The Ponce family circus has been living and performing in rural Mexico for seven generations. Its history dates back to the late 19th century, when Genaro Ponce founded the Circo Ponce Hermanos. Today... more
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Episode 22 - Summer Pasture
Release Date: 2012-05-10Locho and Yama are nomadic herders in Tibet's high grasslands, who carve their existence from the land as their ancestors have for generations. As traditional nomadic life confronts rapid modernizatio... more
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Episode 23 - Precious Knowledge
Release Date: 2012-05-17When a highly successful Mexican American Studies program at a high school in Tucson comes under fire for teaching ethnic chauvinism, teachers and students fight back. This modern civil rights struggl... more
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Episode 24 - Left by the Ship
Release Date: 2012-05-24JR, Charlene, Margarita, and Robert are half American; they are among the many children born to local women and U.S. servicemen who were stationed in military bases in the Philippines until in 1992. T... more
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Episode 25 - Hell and Back Again
Release Date: 2012-05-28U.S. Marine Sergeant Nathan Harris, 25, leads his unit to fight a ghostlike enemy in Afghanistan. Wounded in battle, Harris returns to North Carolina and his devoted wife to fight pain, addiction, and... more
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Episode 26 - We Were Here
Release Date: 2012-06-07When AIDS arrived in San Francisco in 1981, it decimated a community, but also brought people together in inspiring and moving ways to support and care for one another and to fight for dignity and a c... more
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Episode 27 - Strong!
Release Date: 2012-06-26A formidable figure standing at 5'8" and weighing more than 300 pounds, Cheryl Haworth struggles to defend her champion status as her lifetime weightlifting career inches towards its inevitable end. H... more