Blog

Headshot of filmmaker Alison O'Daniel, in glasses, chest length hair and tangerine colored t shirt against blue background.
Interviews

May 20, 2024

“To Film with Your Ears”: Reinventing Cinematic Language with The Tuba Thieves

Independent Lens in Behind the Films

By Rachel Kolb Alison O’Daniel is a visual artist and filmmaker who works with sound, moving images, sculpture, and large-scale installations. She is the director of The Tuba Thieves, an…...

Astronaut Matthias Maurer and CIMON (robotic companion) on the space station
Beyond the Films

May 06, 2024

How Science Fiction Confronts the Real Isolation of Space

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

By Anthony Ha [Note: Some movie spoilers within.] If decades of science fiction have taught me one thing about being an astronaut, it’s that you have to watch out for…...

Behind the Films

April 29, 2024

What Extreme Outer Space Isolation Can Teach Humans

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

Filmmaker Ido Mizrahy was fascinated by space travel isolation from a young age, inspired and awed by science fiction films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, and the original Solaris.…...

Rodrigo Reyes recreating courtroom scene with him as interpreter for Sanson
Interviews

September 18, 2023

From Crimmigration Court Interpreter to Lifelong Friends

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

Mexican American filmmaker Rodrigo Reyes was and still is a court interpreter in rural California. It was in that capacity that he met then 19-year-old Mexican migrant Sansón Noé Andrade,…...

Yuji Okumoto as Shu Kai Kim, Robert Downey Jr. and James Woods standing in front of prison cell bars, in True Believer
Beyond the Films

May 26, 2023

From True Believer to The Help, How the White Gaze Has Shown Hollywood’s Shortsightedness

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

An Essay by Dana Verde [Sources and further reading listed at the end] They say hindsight is 20/20 and, historically, stories about real BIPOC characters in both mainstream film and…...

Sam Harkness, age 11, screams as a freight train passes by, Color Super-8mm, 1998
Interviews

May 04, 2023

Home Movies and Heartbreak: Brothers Bond Over Decades of Filmmaking

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

By Brian Darr Sam Now is filled with the unexpected twists and turns of a family undergoing great upheaval, filmed over the course of a quarter-century by one of its…...

Actors Vincent d'Onofrio, Matthew Modine and R.Lee Ermey on the set of
Lists

October 10, 2022

Wild & Disturbing: 10 Hazing Scenes in Movies and TV

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

By Ade D. Adeniji The documentary Hazing begs the question: How far will people go just to fit in?  Our need to haze and be hazed has been explored in…...

Birth of a Movement

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 today about race relations,… Read More

From the Tacos of Texas docuseries, musicians from Brownsville Texas are seen in rear view mirror
Lists

September 17, 2021

Road Trippin’, Part II: These Documentaries Will Show You All 50 States

Craig Phillips in Lists

[related-link link="https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/road-trippin-part-1-documentaries-for-every-state/" link_title="Read Part I: Road Trippin' here >>"] [pictured at left, in the side mirror: a scene from Tacos of Texas (Brownsville)] We continue our epic journey across America…...

Side mirror with image from Real Dirt on Farmer John in the mirror
Lists

September 17, 2021

Road Trippin’ Part I: These Documentaries Will Show You All 50 States

Craig Phillips in Lists

Rev up your virtual station wagon and pack your bags for a road trip across America through documentary film. No documentary or double feature will capture an entire state's essence,…...

Contests

February 03, 2021

Enter to Win “A Day in the Life of America” T-Shirt

Independent Lens in Contests

Join us for a good old-fashioned giveaway. Enter by February 9 at 8:59pm PT for a chance to win a limited edition A Day in the Life of America T-shirt!…...

Jared Leto working on his film carrying a blow torch
Interviews

January 06, 2021

How Jared Leto and 92 Film Crews Captured 24 Hours in America

Craig Phillips in Behind the Films

In some ways, you'd think Jared Leto, Oscar-winning actor, movie star, and frontman for Platinum-selling band (with his brother Shannon) 30 Seconds to Mars, would not need much of an…...