Blog

Proud to be a farmer emblem on back of farmer's shirt, in Look and See
Interviews

April 19, 2018

Laura Dunn Draws From Wendell Berry for Look at Rural America

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Laura Dunn's first feature documentary, The Unforeseen, executive produced by Robert Redford and Terrence Malick, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, aired on the Sundance Channel, and was called "a…...

Director Cullen Hoback (at right) takes secret charter up West Virginia river to collect water samples under the cover of night.
Interviews

April 10, 2018

Filmmaker Cullen Hoback Digs Into Political Cover-Ups and Chemical Spills in Americans Water

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Filmmaker Cullen Hoback's previous film Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013), a humorous but chilling documentary about the erosion of online privacy and what info governments and corporations are legally…...

Interviews

April 04, 2018

Shoes Wisely: Stacey Tenenbaum Shines a Light on an Age-Old Profession

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Award-winning filmmaker Stacey Tenenbaum co-created a critically acclaimed series in Canada, The Beat, which followed a team of beat police officers patrolling the streets of Downtown Vancouver. Exchanging the police beat…...

Shahin Najafi resting before concert, in ultraviolet light
Interviews

March 28, 2018

Filmmaker Till Schauder Had Many Sleepless Nights Telling Shahin Najafi’s Story

Craig Phillips in Interviews

The German-born, New York-based filmmaker Till Schauder's previous film The Iran Job was about an American basketball player who went with great trepidation to play professionally in Iran, a winning…...

Dolores Huerta, black and white photo, from
Interviews

March 13, 2018

Peter Bratt Feels the Calling to Tell Dolores Huerta’s Story

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Filmmaker Peter Bratt's first feature Follow Me Home, a San Francisco International Film Festival Audience Award winner, was produced with his brother Benjamin Bratt, which they followed with the heartfelt indie film La…...

Interviews

February 21, 2018

Filmmaker Theo Anthony’s Ratty Exploration of Urban Segregation

Craig Phillips in Interviews

[pullquote]"It’s cool to watch younger audiences watch the film, because they just get the filmic language right away. It’s a film that feels more like an Instagram story than a…...

Musician/Composer Dan Deacon performing; photo by Adam Boaz
Beyond the Films

February 16, 2018

10 Questions with “Rat Film” Composer Dan Deacon: On Baltimore, Rats, Player Pianos and Theremins

Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films

Baltimore-based composer/musician Dan Deacon did the music for Theo Anthony's Rat Film. The film, which uses the urban rat as a way to explore a deeper story of urbanization and…...

Winnie Mandela in a press conference, late 80s
Interviews

January 29, 2018

“Winnie” Filmmaker Gives a New Perspective on Anti-Apartheid Activist Winnie Mandela

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Filmmaker Pascale Lamche took on the enormous but important challenge of documenting Winnie Mandela's story, a narrative, as she discovered, that was slightly skewed in the mind of many across…...

Tell Them We Are Rising filmmakers Marco Williams and Stanley Nelson (l-r)
Interviews

January 26, 2018

Filmmakers Marco Williams and Stanley Nelson Tell an Essential Chapter of American History in Story of HBCUs

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Tell Them We Are Rising, which premieres on Independent Lens on PBS Monday, February 19 at 9 pm [check local listings], covers the rich history of America’s Historically Black Colleges and…...

Dylan with filmmaker Nanfu Wang reflected at right, shooting I Am Another You
Interviews

January 24, 2018

How a Chinese Filmmaker Ended up in Florida with a Drifter from Utah

Craig Phillips in Interviews

Nanfu Wang was a student at NYU when she went exploring America, which found her in Florida staying at a hostel. There she encountered a young drifter named Dylan, whom…...

The Force, riding in police car with Officer Cairo
Interviews

January 17, 2018

Balancing Along the Thin Blue Line, Filmmaker Captures Police Force at an Explosive Time

Craig Phillips in Interviews

A follow-up to his acclaimed, Independent Spirit Truer than Fiction Award-winning film The Waiting Room (Independent Lens, 2013), Pete Nicks' The Force is part of a trilogy of films he's making which…...

James Baldwin on the Dick Cavett Show
Interviews

January 10, 2018

How “I Am Not Your Negro” Filmmaker Reopened James Baldwin’s “House”

Craig Phillips in Interviews

The worldly Haitian-born filmmaker Raoul Peck and his family fled the Duvalier dictatorship in 1961 and found asylum in the Democratic Republic of Congo, before Peck finished his schooling in…...