Independent Lens

Free For All: The Public Library tells the story of how a simple idea shaped a nation and the quiet revolutionaries who made it happen. From pioneering women behind the “Free Library Movement” to today's librarians who service the public despite working in a contentious age of closures. Free for All shows how libraries have always been a sanctuary for generations of Americans.

We Want the Funk is a syncopated voyage through the history of funk music, spanning from African, soul, and early jazz roots, to its rise into the public consciousness. Featuring James Brown's dynamism, the extraterrestrial funk of George Clinton's Parliament Funkadelic, transformed girl group Labelle, and Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, the story also traces funk's influences on both new wave and hip-hop.

Home Court is the coming-of-age story of Ashley Chea, a Cambodian American basketball prodigy in Southern California. As her high school career crescendos, her life intensifies amid recruitment, injury, and triumph as her natural talent inspires the support of those around her.

Get ready for our upcoming documentaries: WE WANT THE FUNK!, Who is Michael Jang?, Matter of Mind: My Alzheimer's, and Free for All: The Public Library. INDEPENDENT LENS returns with a season of powerful stories that celebrate resilience and connection. Watch the new films on the PBS app this Spring!

Knowing his dad miraculously recovered from three open-heart surgeries after discovering a passion for cycling, filmmaker Eric D. Seals proposes an ambitious idea: Bike together from St. Louis to Chicago. 350 miles. 4 days. On their journey, the two push each other as they find a deeper connection and a renewed appreciation of their quests for their own health and to reimagine Black health.

A journey to reckon with Brazil’s harsh inequality begins when filmmaker Denise Zmekhol discovers her father’s architectural masterpiece in São Paulo—a 24-story tall modernist icon known as “Pele de Vidro” (Skin of Glass)—is inhabited by hundreds of unhoused people. But after getting to know these occupants, what started as a personal quest becomes something much bigger.

Following her brother's death, a filmmaker returns to Eagle Pass, the Texas bordertown where she grew up, to document the places that shaped their family. She finds a treasure trove of his own footage that brings him back to life, sparking a reflection on growing up Mexican American along the U.S.-Mexico border. She rediscovers the beautiful mysteries of their complex hometown.

The high-security Pelican Bay prison was designed for mass-scale solitary confinement, often for a decade or more, and with little due process. In 2013, 30,000 prisoners went on a hunger strike that spread into a feat of unity across California prisons. The Strike follows these solitary survivors who fought to abolish indefinite isolation.

After 13 years living in Philadelphia, Delwin Fiddler Jr., a champion grass dancer, embraces indigenous culture by returning to his ancestral home on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. Leaving his big city life behind, Delwin aims to protect his centuries-old Lakota heritage and heal from family tragedy, through his passion for dance.

An insider’s look at the rise and fall of the NFT (non-fungible token) phenomenon and how technology transformed the traditional art world, for better and worse. Featuring verité footage and candid interviews with groundbreaking artists—like Beeple, Latasha Alcindor, and Loish— at the center of this phenomenon, Minted delves into the complex world of the $40 billion NFT digital art market.

As fault lines emerge between those who follow, make, and battle against the law, what will the future of Dallas look like?

Independent Lens is back, serving up impactful, acclaimed new docs, starting with Home Court, Bike Vessel Minted, The In Between and followed by Skin of Glass, Without Arrows, The Strike, and Dallas, 2019.

Riddled with survivor's guilt after his unit lost 17 men during "Operation Enduring Freedom" in Afghanistan, Marine veteran Anthony Marquez makes it his mission to reconnect with the Gold Star families of the fallen. By carving and hand-delivering a battlefield cross for each of the families affected by loss, Anthony finds the path to heal himself.

At a time when many Americans question democratic institutions, One Person, One Vote? unveils the complexities of the Electoral College, the uniquely American and often misunderstood mechanism for electing a president. The documentary follows four presidential electors representing different parties in Colorado during the intense 2020 election.

A wild hog hunt in the Ozarks leads to an unexpectedly vulnerable dialogue between Iranian American filmmaker Andy Sarjahani and his childhood friend Bubba as they navigate a polarized world.

Independent Lens is back serving up powerful, acclaimed new docs, starting with One Person, One Vote? and followed by Wild Hogs and Saffron, The History of White People in America, Make Peace or Die: Honor the Fallen, and United States of Comedy.

In 1897, the Belgica set sail for Antarctica on the first true science mission to the end of the world,. But within 200 days, the crew found themselves trapped in sea ice, battling disease and insanity during the unending polar night. What can their trials teach us about maintaining sanity in the harsh environments of space as humanity plans for it’s first crewed mission to Mars?

What is the role of sound and what does it mean to listen? Hard of hearing filmmaker Alison O’Daniel uses a series of tuba thefts in Los Angeles high schools as a jumping-off point to explore these questions. Through several d/Deaf people telling stories in a unique game of telephone, the central mystery of The Tuba Thieves isn’t about theft of instruments; it’s about the nature of sound itself.

Humanity's first Martian explorers will face extreme confinement, isolation and disruption of all bodily rhythms. The psychological stress from all of this could lead to a breakdown of social order among those on the mission – even mutiny. Are there lessons that can be learned about this from terrestrial explorers of the past?

A manned mission to Mars presents a huge array of challenges for scientists and explorers to figure out. Chief among them: how to keep humans sane and relatively content on the isolating, confining, and potentially years long journey to the red planet and back. Turns out, explorers from generations ago here on Earth survived similar challenges that tomorrow's astronauts can learn from.