Blog

More Than a Month filmmaker Shukree Tilghman

February 16, 2012

Shukree Tilghman Wants to End (the Way We Think About) Black History Month

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Shukree Tilghman saw Morgan Freeman on 60 Minutes in 2006 say that he believed Black History Month shouldn't exist, because it was insulting to relegate an entire race's history to…...

Behind the Films

February 07, 2012

Contextualizing the Black Power Movement for a New Generation

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Göran Olssen is something of an accidental anthropologist. When he unearthed reels of footage from Swedish television crews in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, he stumbled on…...

February 03, 2012

Sharon La Cruise Discusses Daisy Bates, “a Different Kind of Hero”

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Premiering tonight, February 2 on Independent Lens (check your local listings), Daisy Bates: First Lady of Little Rock examines the life and legacy of Daisy Bates, who organized nine African…...

January 21, 2012

Dr. Angela Davis Reflects on the Black Power Movement

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Earlier this month, Independent Lens launched a slate of films celebrating Black History at the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles. While at the event, the series teamed up with…...

January 01, 2012

Remembering Wangari Maathai

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Lisa Merton and Alan Dater, the producers of Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, attended the Nobel laureate and environmental activist's funeral in Kenya in October. Merton offered Independent…...

December 26, 2011

A Love Letter to Celluloid Penned by Two Doc Makers

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Paul Mariano and Kurt Norton are co-founders of Gravitas Docufilms in California, and the producers of These Amazing Shadows, which made its debut on Independent Lens on Dec. 29, 2011…...

December 22, 2011

Behind the Scenes of The Woodmans with C. Scott Willis and Lois Vossen

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This week marks the premiere of The Woodmans, a film by C. Scott Willis about a family of successful artists and the fallout from the death of their youngest and…...

December 07, 2011

The Greatest Movie Montages — Got a Favorite?

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Our good friends Kurt Norton and Paul Mariano who produced These Amazing Shadows (which airs on Independent Lens on Dec. 29) have posted a really cool video on their blog…...

B&W photo of Jerry Rothwell, director of Donor Unknown

October 18, 2011

Jerry Rothwell Explores the Meaning of Family in Donor Unknown

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Jerry Rothwell is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes the award-winning feature docs Heavy Load (IFC/ITVS/BBC), about a group of people with learning disabilities who form a punk band; and Deep…...

May 18, 2011

Ethnobiology Enthusiast Filmmaker versus MOTHRA!

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We caught up with Jessica Oreck, the director of Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, to talk about her maiden voyage into documentary filmmaking. For a young woman who spent a lifetime…...

May 06, 2011

The Danger and Pathos of Shooting the BHUTTO Doc

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The day after Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, political consultant and film producer and director Duane Baughman was on the phone with his colleague Mark Siegel, who had…...

Director Jeff Malmberg and Mark Hogancamp with their Marwencol alter egos. (Photo by Chris Shellen)
Interviews

April 25, 2011

Marwencol Director Reflects on a Man, His Dolls, and the Touch of Genius

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Jeff Malmberg, director of Marwencol, took on much more than just a film project when he decided to shoot a documentary about Mark Hogancamp. Intrigued by a magazine article about…...