April 20, 2017
Ferne Pearlstein Asks Comedians and Survivors: What Is Off-Limits in Comedy?
Craig Phillips in Interviews
“Somebody once said, ‘Tragedy plus time equals comedy.’ And I always felt, why wait?” - Comedian Gilbert Gottfried, in The Last Laugh There have been many films about the Holocaust,…...
April 12, 2017
Filmmakers Share the Roots of their Seed Documentary
Craig Phillips in Interviews
With SEED: The Untold Story, filmmakers Taggart Siegel and Jon Betz complete a trilogy of sorts, after The Real Dirt on Farmer John and The New York Times Critic Pick…...
April 03, 2017
Kim A. Snyder Tells Newtown Families’ Deeply Intimate Story
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Filmmaker Kim Snyder is no stranger to having to patiently and empathetically ingratiate herself with a community. Her film Welcome to Shelbyville, which was nationally broadcast on Independent Lens, spent time in a…...
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…...
March 17, 2017
Filmmakers Lou Pepe and Keith Fulton Tell Story of At-Risk Youth Getting Last Chance
Craig Phillips in Behind the Films
Filmmakers Lou Pepe and Keith Fulton have gone from the deserts of Spain (for their acclaimed film Lost in La Mancha about Terry Gilliam's ill-fated attempt to make a Don Quixote…...
February 13, 2017
Keith Maitland Goes Back to 1966 to Tell Story of Victims and Heroes of Texas Shooting
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Keith Maitland's previous film The Eyes of Me, the moving story of a group of blind teenagers making their way in Austin, aired on Independent Lens and was nominated for an…...
February 09, 2017
Filmmaker Matt Ornstein Captures Daryl Davis’s Quest to Confront Racism, One Racist at a Time
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Filmmaker Matt Ornstein has a background in music videos and short films (one of which, Atlantis, was about that space shuttle's last launch and starred Jason Ritter), but the story…...
February 02, 2017
Filmmakers Tell Story of William Trotter’s Fight Against Racist Silent Blockbuster
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Birth of a Movement, based on Dick Lehr's book, captures the backdrop to a prescient clash between human rights, freedom of speech, and a changing media landscape — that happened in 1915.…...
January 21, 2017
Filmmaker James Solomon Peels Back the Mythology of the Kitty Genovese Story
Craig Phillips in Interviews
The Witness may be James Solomon's first film as director, but his vast experience as a storyteller made him the perfect fit for reopening this case. The Witness, which made…...
January 11, 2017
Filmmaker Mat Hames Goes to Wind River to Amplify Native Voices
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Award-winning filmmaker Mat Hames’s feature documentary, When I Rise, about African American mezzo-soprano and civil rights icon Barbara Conrad, was featured on Independent Lens and nominated for an IDA Documentary…...
January 06, 2017
Containment Filmmakers Go into the Future to Read the Warning Signs
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Harvard professors and filmmakers Peter Galison and Robb Moss have been collaborating for a decade: first, in co-teaching a course, bringing student filmmakers into scientific laboratories to think about the…...
December 23, 2016
For Filmmakers Geeta and Ravi Patel, Love Is a Family Affair
Craig Phillips in Interviews
It was a long and winding road for sibling filmmakers Geeta Patel and her brother Ravi in the making of their film Meet the Patels — including not just the initial…...