A fiercely intelligent, radical activist who became a fabulously wealthy recluse in her later years, Marion Stokes was dedicated to furthering and protecting the truth — so much so that she recorded American television 24 hours a day for over 30 years. Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project… Read More
Beyond the Films
November 15, 2019
For Tribal Communities, Battle Over Land Is Nothing New
Independent Lens in Beyond the Films
By Jordan Dresser Sometimes, two people can look out of the same window and see two very different things. This outlook sprang to my mind while watching Treva Wurmfeld’s Conscience…...
Interviews
November 14, 2019
In Opulent Hamptons Filmmaker Asks, Whose Land Is it Anyway?
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Treva Wurmfeld was named one Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film a few years back and made her mark first with her festival award-winning film Shepard and Dark about…...
Made up of home video footage that reveals a long-kept secret, Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s Rewind is a brave and wrenching look at his childhood and his journey to reconcile his past. By probing the gap between image and reality, the film depicts both how little and… Read More
Interviews
November 06, 2019
Following the Journey of Interpreters We Left Behind
Craig Phillips in Interviews
Filmmakers Andrés Caballero and Sofian Khan's previous feature-length collaboration Gaucho del Norte, which made its broadcast premiere on public television’s America ReFramed series, followed the journey of a Patagonian immigrant sheepherder recruited to work…...
Twenty-five years after Yusuf Abdurahman left Somalia as a refugee to begin his life anew in Minnesota — which has the largest population of Somalis in the United States — his worst fear is realized when his 19-year-old-son Zacharia is arrested in an FBI counterterrorism sting operation. … Read More
Interviews
October 30, 2019
Decade of Fire Filmmakers Change the Narrative About the South Bronx
Craig Phillips in Behind the Films
The three-headed team as it were, of co-directors Vivian Vázquez Irizarry and Gretchen Hildebran, and producer Julia Steele Allen, each brought something different and special to the table in the…...
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
The Hottest August presents an up-close and personal look at New Yorkers’ growing concerns over a variety of societal changes, from rising rents to marching white nationalists, during one sweltering month in 2017. Raising the specter of our changing climate without ever mentioning it directly, the film is… Read More
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
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
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