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 - Cured
Release Date: 2021-10-11When doctors classified homosexuality as a mental illness to be “cured,” they employed cruel treatments like electroshock and lobotomies. LGBTQ+ activists and their allies fought back — and won a mome... more
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Episode 2 - Ferguson Rises
Release Date: 2021-11-08How does a father find purpose in pain? In 2014, Michael Brown Sr.’s son was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, an event that fueled the global Black Lives Matter move... more
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Episode 3 - Storm Lake
Release Date: 2021-11-15Does American democracy survive without the backbone of independent local journalism? Go inside The Storm Lake Times, a newspaper serving an Iowa town that has seen its fair share of changes in the 40... more
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Episode 4 - Duty Free
Release Date: 2021-11-2275-year-old Rebecca loses the only job she's even known. She has no savings, no 401K safety net, and no employment prospects. Rebecca teams up with son Sian-Pierre to take the trip of a lifetime, one ... more
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Episode 5 - Home From School: The Children of Carlisle
Release Date: 2021-11-23"Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” This was the guiding principle that removed thousands of Native American children and placed them in Indian boarding schools. Among the many who died at Car... more
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Episode 6 - A Reckoning in Boston
Release Date: 2022-01-17What happens when you discover that your assumptions are flawed? A white filmmaker starts his academic inquiry by documenting low-income, adult students of color at the Clemente Course in Boston. Afte... more
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Episode 7 - Missing in Brooks County
Release Date: 2022-01-31Migrants go missing in rural South Texas more than anywhere else in the U.S. For many families whose loved ones have disappeared after crossing the Mexico border, activist detective Eddie Canales is t... more
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Episode 8 - Owned: A Tale of Two Americas
Release Date: 2022-02-07Is the "American Dream" of home ownership a false promise? While the government’s postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class, it also set America on two divergent paths – one of p... more
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Episode 9 - Bulletproof
Release Date: 2022-02-14What is the cost of feeling safe? In an era of mass shootings, lockdown drills and teacher firearms training are as much a part of life as homecoming dances and basketball practice. Take a provocative... more
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Episode 10 - Apart
Release Date: 2022-02-21Since the beginning of the War on Drugs, the number of women in U.S. prisons has grown drastically. The majority are mothers. Three unforgettable formerly incarcerated mothers, jailed for drug-related... more
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Episode 11 - Writing With Fire
Release Date: 2022-03-28In a male-dominated media landscape, the women journalists of India's all-female Khabar Lahariya ("News Wave") newspaper risk it all, including their own safety, to cover the country's political, soci... more
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Episode 12 - AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness
Release Date: 2022-04-04What is the science behind consciousness? Six brilliant researchers from around the world—a brain scientist, a plant behaviorist, a healer, a philosophy professor, a psychedelics scientist, and a Budd... more
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Episode 13 - Try Harder!
Release Date: 2022-05-02At Lowell High School, San Francisco's academic pressure cooker, the kids are stressed out. With a majority Asian American student body, high-achieving seniors share their dreams and anxieties about g... more
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Episode 14 - When Claude Got Shot
Release Date: 2022-05-09In Milwaukee, a 15-year-old attempted to carjack law student Claude Motley and shot him in the face. Through multiple surgeries and catastrophic health care bills, the effects of gun violence upends C... more
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Episode 15 - Scenes From The Glittering World
Release Date: 2022-05-16Three Indigenous students experience the highs and lows of adolescence while attending one of the most remote high schools in the United States. Living in the uniquely beautiful but isolated Diné comm... more
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Episode 16 - Hazing
Release Date: 2022-09-12Explore how abusive rituals reflect our desire to belong—even if taken to sometimes deadly lengths.
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Episode 17 - TikTok, Boom.
Release Date: 2022-10-24Explore the power and complexity of technology through the lens of TikTok and the Gen Z influencers who know it best.
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Episode 18 - Move Me
Release Date: 2022-11-07A dancer paralyzed with a spinal cord injury tests the limits of her recovery while adapting to life with a disability.