Independent Lens
TV-PG
8.2
1999
Documentary
This acclaimed Emmy Award-winning anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions of their independent producers and featuring unforgettable stories about a unique individual, community or moment in history.
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- Cast:
- Stanley Tucci
Episode 25 : Two Spirits
June. 14,2011
Fred Martinez was one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history when he was brutally murdered at 16. Two Spirits explores the life and death of a boy who was also a girl, and the essentially spiritual nature of gender.
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Episode 23 : Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
May. 17,2011
Beginning in the modern day and working backward, Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo explores the history of Japan's love affair with bugs. Using insects like an anthropologist's toolkit, the film uncovers Japanese philosophies that will shift viewers' perspectives on nature, beauty, and life, and counter the exigencies of day-to-day life.
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Episode 21 : A Film Unfinished
May. 03,2011
This haunting film about a film examines a classic Nazi propaganda movie used by historians for decades to provide insight into the realities of life in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. The recent discovery of a second reel in an East German archive has thrown the veracity and intent of the Warsaw Ghetto footage into question.
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Episode 18 : Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
April. 12,2011
In his short career, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a phenomenon. Discovered in the late 1970s through his graffiti art on the Lower East Side, he sold his first painting to Deborah Harry for $200 and later became best friends with Andy Warhol. Director Tamra Davis pays homage to her friend in this documentary.
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Episode 17 : The Desert of Forbidden Art
April. 05,2011
This story of how a treasure trove of banned Soviet art worth millions of dollars was stashed in a far-off desert of Uzbekistan develops into a larger exploration of how art survives in times of oppression.
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Episode 16 : Pushing the Elephant
March. 29,2011
Civil war came to Rose's Congolese village, with it the nighttime arrest of her entire family, the execution of her husband and grim negotiations with guards which led to her separation from her five-year-old daughter, Nangabire. More than a decade later, resettled in Phoenix, Rose and her children are reunited with Nangabire. Rose emerged from her experience advocating forgiveness and reconciliation.
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Episode 15 : Me Facing Life: Cyntoia's Story
March. 01,2011
At the age of 16, Cyntoia Brown, who had suffered a long history of abuse, killed a man who picked her up for sex. The filmmaker has unprecedented access to Cyntioa in prison, and spends two years with her and her family as they await her eventual sentencing to life in prison in Tennessee. This film challenges our assumptions about violence and explores how a young person can be predestined for tragedy by life circumstances.
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Episode 14 : William S. Burroughs: A Man Within
February. 22,2011
An iconoclast who himself became an icon, William Burroughs explored the outer boundaries of culture and identity in the 1950s. His work was vilified by conservatives and banned by the U.S. government, but emerged to influence artists for generations to come. Burroughs's friends and colleagues remember the public persona and the private man.
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Episode 13 : When I Rise
February. 08,2011
A profile of Barbara Smith Conrad, a gifted University of Texas music student, who finds herself at the epicenter of racial controversy, struggling against the odds and ultimately ascending to the heights of international opera.
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Episode 9 : The Calling, Part 2
December. 21,2010
Muslim, Catholic, Evangelical Christian, and Jewish seminarians embark on their life path in a secular and cynical era. A close look at how faith is lived today. / The conclusion of "The Calling," about America's next generation of religious leaders in the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths. The documentary chronicles their transformation from students to ordained religious professionals.
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Episode 3 : Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian
November. 02,2010
The portrayal of Native Americans in cinema. / Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond takes an entertaining, insightful, and often humorous look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through a century of cinema and examining the myth of "the Injun." Narrated by Diamond with infectious enthusiasm and good humor, this film is a loving look at cinema through the eyes of the people who appeared in its very first flickering images and have survived to tell their stories their own way.
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Episode 1 : The Parking Lot Movie
October. 19,2010
This documentary is about a singular parking lot in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the select group of parking lot attendants that inhabit its microcosm. The attendants are a uniquely varied group of men comprised of both undergraduate and graduate students, philosophers, intellectuals, musicians, artists, and marginal-type characters.
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