By Ivonne Spinoza Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn’s Folk Frontera is a border-set tale, expertly portraying the beauty and heartbreak that comes with living on the U.S.-Mexico border. Connecting two…...
Between 2011 and 2013, tubas were stolen from high schools across Southern California. Against this backdrop, hard of hearing filmmaker Alison O’Daniel generates new sensitivity to sound and meaning in an unconventional documentary experience. Read More
At the center of the documentary Children of Las Brisas are the young musicians of El Sistema, the extraordinary, publicly financed, voluntary sector music-education program founded in Venezuela in 1975…...
By Allison Kirkland Kelsey Peterson's journey in Move Me will resonate with anyone who has undergone change and found something different but just as beautiful on the other side of…...
Far West Texas is a place where local folklore looms as large as the landscape. Two fronteriza women—one a public radio music show host, the other a Mariachi and folklórico dancer—live in two cultures at the same time, as they struggle to find their place in the vast Chihuahuan Desert. Read More
Aloe Blacc's inspiring anthem, "Other Side," is the featured song in the PBS documentary Ferguson Rises. The tragic killing of teenager Michael Brown Jr. by Ferguson, Missouri, police launched the…...
Check it out. Claressa "T-Rex" Shields, Olympic champ and star of the documentary T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold, sent us the tunes she pops into her iPod whenever she has to…...
69-year-old Howard Mordoh is a retired clinical laboratory scientist, a southern California native, and possibly the world’s biggest concert enthusiast. Self-described as a “professional audience,” Howard has been a notorious fixture of the Los Angeles music scene for decades, attending five to eight concerts per week since the 70s… Read More
If you're of a certain generation and familiar at all with the late '60s and early '70s groundbreaking public TV show SOUL!, you may recognize the name Ellis Haizlip, but…...
by Nick Dedina Today we take it for granted that Black culture is mainstream American culture. But, before the age of hip-hop, cable TV, the internet, streaming, and mobile phones,…...
![On the set of SOUL! with Ellis Haizlip interviewing Melvin Van Peebles [Credit: Chester Higgins]](https://staging.pbs.org/independentlens/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/MR_SOUL_stanlathan_ellishaizlip_Melvin-Van-Peebles-650x650-c-default.jpg)
By Ade D. Adeniji Mr. SOUL! explores America’s first Black variety television show SOUL!, which ran from 1968 to 1973, and was steered by pioneering Black producer and host Ellis…...