Blog

Eating Up Easter

More than just a picture-perfect postcard of iconic stone statues, Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is a microcosm of a planet in flux. Directed by native Rapa Nui filmmaker Sergio Mata’u Rapu, Eating Up Easter explores the challenges his people are facing, and the… Read More

Cooked: Survival by Zip Code

In the summer of 1995, Chicago experienced an unthinkable disaster, when extremely high humidity and a layer of heat-retaining pollution drove the heat index up to more than 126 degrees. Cooked: Survival by Zip Code tells the story of this tragic heatwave, the most… Read More

Leftover Women

Leftover Women follows three successful Chinese women — Qiu Hua Mei, a 34-year-old lawyer; Xu Min, 28, who works in public radio; and Gai Qi, 36, an assistant college professor in Beijing — who, despite thriving careers, are still labeled “leftover women,” or sheng… Read More

Bedlam

To get to the bottom of the current mental health crisis in the U.S., psychiatrist and documentarian Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D. chronicles the personal, poignant stories of those suffering from serious mental illness, including his own family, to bring to light to this epidemic and possible solutions. Shot… Read More

The First Rainbow Coalition

In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party, notably led by the charismatic Fred Hampton, began to form alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city, including the Latinx group the Young Lords Organization and the working-class young southern whites of the Young… Read More

Always in Season

Always in Season follows the tragedy of African American teenager Lennon Lacy, who in August 2014, was found hanging from a swing set in Bladenboro, North Carolina. His suspicious death was ruled a suicide by law enforcement, but Lennon’s mother, Claudia, her family, and many others believe Lennon… Read More

Conscience Point

Beneath the mystique of The Hamptons, among the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., lies the history of the area’s original inhabitants, the Shinnecock Indian Nation, who were edged off their land over the course of hundreds of years, relocated to an impoverished reservation, and condemned to watch… Read More

Decade of Fire

Decade of Fire covers a shocking but untold piece of American urban history, when the South Bronx was on fire in the 1970s.  Left unprotected by the city government, nearly a quarter-million people were displaced as their close-knit, multiethnic neighborhood burned to the ground, reducing the… Read More

The Interpreters

The Interpreters is a poignant but tense portrayal of a very human and high-stakes side of war’s aftermath, the story of how Afghan and Iraqi interpreters risked their lives aiding American troops–but then became the people we left behind.  During the wars in Iraq… Read More

ATTLA

ATTLA tells the gripping but little-known story of George Attla, a charismatic Alaska Native dogsled racer who, with one good leg and fierce determination, became a legendary sports hero in Northern communities around the world. Part dog whisperer, part canny businessman and part heartthrob, Attla rose to international… Read More

NASA astronaut Mae Jemison waits as her suit technician, Sharon McDougle, performs a unpressurized and pressurized leak check on her spacesuit, 1992.
Beyond the Films

July 02, 2019

Space Scientists of Color, and the “Afronauts”

Independent Lens in Beyond the Films

By Satu Runa What drives humankind to explore? There are several factors that can embolden a person to “seek out new civilizations” or “boldly go where no one has gone…...

I Am Not Your Negro

I Am Not Your Negro envisions the book James Baldwin never finished, a radical narration about race in America, using the writer’s original words, as read by actor Samuel L. Jackson. Alongside a flood of rich archival material, the film draws upon Baldwin’s notes on the… Read More