Independent Lens

Indie Films Series / 8 Seasons

Authentic stories. Extraordinary people.

1h 25m / TV-14

The Homestretch: Roque's Story

2m 32s / TV-PG

In this excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary The Homestretch, we are introduced to Roque, who has been separated from his parents due to immigration issues. Roque, temporarily living his teacher’s home, is one of more than 22,000 homeless students in Chicago public schools, but he hasn’t given up his dream of going to college.

Coming to Independent Lens: Little Hope Was Arson

30s / TV-PG

January 2010: In the “buckle of the Bible Belt,” 10 churches burn to the ground in just over a month, igniting the largest criminal investigation in East Texas history. No stone is left unturned, and even Satan himself is considered a suspect in this investigation of a community terrorized from the inside out.

Little White Lie: Finding Her New Identity at Georgetown

3m 39s / TV-G

In this excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary Little White Lie, filmmaker Lacey Schwartz talks about how applying to college at Georgetown University made her more ready to try on a new identity for herself. She was welcomed by the black community when she joined the Black Student Alliance, and it also lead her to finally confront her mother about why she looks the way she does.

Coming Soon to Independent Lens: Little White Lie

30s / TV-G

Filmmaker Lacey Schwartz grew up in a typical upper middle class Jewish household in Woodstock, NY, with a strong sense of her identity. But after her parents split apart, she begins to piece together the mystery of how a white girl could have such dark skin, and learns the truth about her biological father.

Little White Lie: Growing Up White

4m 22s / TV-G

In this excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary Little White Lie, filmmaker Lacey Schwartz looks back at her birth and childhood, through family photos and home movies. From a young age she’d begun to wonder why her skin was darker than other family and friends, and it became the one thing she wanted to change.

Little White Lie: Family Origins

1m 35s / TV-PG

In this excerpt from the opening moments of the Independent Lens documentary Little White Lie, filmmaker Lacey Schwartz introduces us to her family tree, a “long line of New York Jews.” Growing up, she tells us, she’d never suspected she was anything but white.

Coming to Independent Lens: The Homestretch

30s / TV-G

Three homeless teens brave Chicago winters, high school pressures, and life alone on the streets to build a brighter future. Against the odds, they recover from a life of abandonment to create new, surprising definitions of home.

American Denial: Implicit Bias Test

2m 14s / TV-PG

This excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary American Denial looks at the “Implicit Bias Test,” which was created to test people’s unconscious bias toward words and concepts, and toward races. It is not about conscious attitudes and beliefs, as one researcher tells us in the film, but about something you yourself may not know you have.

American Denial: People at the Margins

1m 55s / TV-PG

In this excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary American Denial, researcher Sudhir Venkatesh talks about his own survey of African Americans entrenched in poor housing projects. One leader of a gang told him, “If you really want to know what life is like you gotta get closer, hang around with us.” This is what Gunnar Myrdal tried to do as well, in his landmark study of race in America.

American Denial: An American Dilemma

2m 54s / TV-PG

In this excerpt from the Independent Lens documentary American Denial, we are introduced to Swedish researcher Gunnar Myrdal, who began his investigation into American values and views on equality in the 1930s. Myrdal’s unsettling study An American Dilemma was published in 1944, and the questions it raised about racial oppression still trouble us today.

Coming to Independent Lens: American Denial

30s / TV-PG

In the wake of recent events that have sparked a national dialogue on race dynamics, American Denial explores the impact of unconscious biases around race and class, using Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 investigation of Jim Crow racism.

Through a Lens Darkly: Gordon Parks

1m 47s / TV-PG

In this excerpt from the opening moments of the Independent Lens documentary Through a Lens Darkly, the groundbreaking African American photographer Gordon Parks is explored. A hero to many modern photographers, Parks “felt the need to use humanity to get people to become aware of how people suffered.”

Through a Lens Darkly: Family Photo Albums

1m 44s / TV-PG

In this excerpt from the opening moments of the Independent Lens documentary Through a Lens Darkly, we see how African American family secrets and histories can be explored through the family photo album, in what it chooses to represent by what is absent, and what is hidden.

Coming to Independent Lens: Through a Lens Darkly

30s / TV-PG

Illustrating the power photography had and still has in shaping America’s views of race, Through a Lens Darkly traces 170 years of history -- from daguerreotypes in the days of slavery to more modern times — of African Americans in front of, and behind, the camera.

A Path Appears: Battered in Atlanta

2m 8s / TV-PG

In this scene from the third episode of the Independent Lens documentary series A Path Appears, Nicholas Kristof joins the Atlanta police department to investigate a domestic violence case. The victim tells Kristof she doesn’t think it’ll happen again while blaming herself for the attack.

A Path Appears: A Girl Named Flevian

3m 17s / TV-PG

In this scene from the third episode of the Independent Lens documentary series A Path Appears, Nicholas Kristof and Mia Farrow join Jessica Posner Odede of Shining Hope in Kibera, a notorious slum in Nairobi, Kenya, as they race to get a violently abused girl named Flavian to the hospital. They discover a disturbing revelation in her case.

Coming to Independent Lens: A Path Appears

3m 7s / TV-PG

From the team behind the groundbreaking Half the Sky, A Path Appears goes to locations throughout the United States, plus Colombia, Haiti, and Kenya to uncover the harshest forms of gender-based oppression and human rights violations, and solutions being implemented to combat them.

A Path Appears: A Nashville Pimp

2m 4s / TV-PG

In this scene from the first episode of the Independent Lens documentary series A Path Appears, Shana Goodwin, whose earliest memories are of being sexually abused by her grandfather, guides Ashley Judd through the streets of Nashville, where they encounter a pimp waiting on a street corner for three of his “girls.” He tells them he supplies the women with shelter, food, pedicures, and drugs.

A Path Appears: National Day of Johns Arrests

2m 47s / TV-PG

In this scene from the first episode of the Independent Lens documentary series A Path Appears, Nicholas Kristof follows Chicago police’s special operations for a sting cracking down on “johns.” Focusing on the demand side of the multi-billion dollar trafficking industry is a way to shift blame from prostitutes.

A Path Appears: A Daughter Lost and Found

2m 34s / TV-PG

In this powerful scene from the Independent Lens documentary series A Path Appears, we go to Boston, as Nicholas Kristof joins Audrey Morrissey of anti-trafficking organization My Life My Choice to meet a family looking for their daughter Maria, whom they fear has fallen prey to sex traffickers and is living on the streets. Kristof and Morrissey help Maria’s parents search for her online.

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