May 06, 2016
Losing Your Religion: Nine Movies about Crises of Faith
Noel Murray in Lists
Abigail Disney’s documentary The Armor of Light takes an unusual but illuminating approach to the gun control debate. In the film, Reverend Rob Schenck — an evangelical Christian who gained some…...
April 27, 2016
Blood Guilt: 12 Movies about Healing after Heinous Crimes
Sean Axmaker in Beyond the Films
Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter are the adult children of high-ranking Nazi officers. As we learn in My Nazi Legacy, their fathers sent tens of thousands of people to…...
March 24, 2016
Magic in the Modern Age: Do You (Still) Believe in Magic?
Lisa Ko in Beyond the Films
Legendary stage magician and escapologist James “The Amazing” Randi broke out of 22 jails during his career, going so far as to break Harry Houdini’s record of time spent inside…...
March 23, 2016
Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein Unlock the Mystery of James “The Amazing” Randi
Craig Phillips in Interviews
As famous a skeptic as he is a magician, James "The Amazing" Randi has led a life full of magic and mystery, as much off the stage as on it,…...
March 10, 2016
The Unmaking of: Stories of the Greatest Films Never Made
Sean Axmaker in Film History
The "making of" documentary has become a lively subgenre of nonfiction filmmaking, thanks in large part to the explosion of home video and the proliferation of cable channels in the…...
March 04, 2016
Documentaries for Movie Geeks: Films About Films
Scott Weinberg in Behind the Films
Once you've watched a beloved movie two or three times, you start to crave a little more information about the film's conception, production, and cultural impact, among other things. So…...
February 10, 2016
The Black Panthers Mixtape
Independent Lens in Lists
For The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, which aired on Independent Lens, you can plug in, turn on, and get down with our curated Spotify playlist. The set joins the…...
February 06, 2016
Nelson George Captures the Poise of Misty Copeland to Tell a Ballerina’s Tale
Independent Lens in Behind the Films
Author, filmmaker, television producer, and critic Nelson George may have worn a lot of hats in his long career, but his love for music has been constant throughout. He's published numerous non-fiction…...
February 05, 2016
Breaking Barriers on Stage: African American Ballet Dancers Who Made History
Craig Phillips in Beyond the Films
As we learn in A Ballerina's Tale, Nelson George's new documentary about Misty Copeland's Eurocentric standards of body shape, muscle tone, and skin color excluded dancers who didn't fit the wan mold…...
January 09, 2016
More Than Rain Man: Autism Portrayals on Screen
Noel Murray in Beyond the Films
For a long time, the Oscar-winning 1988 drama Rain Man wasn’t just the best-known representation of autism on film, it was a lot of people’s only frame of reference for…...
January 07, 2016
From the Archive: Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond Talks Motion Picture Making
Independent Lens in Beyond the Films
In memory of Vilmos Zsigmond, the legendary cinematographer who died New Years Day, we reached into the Independent Lens archive for an interview Mr. Zsigmond gave us in June 2010…...
January 01, 2016
Ilinca Calugareanu Returns to Her 1980s Romania Roots
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Chuck Norris vs Communism may not literally be the retro action film the title implies, it's a shorthand way of reflecting how this new documentary captures the giddy way Romanians in…...