Independent Lens is a weekly television series airing on PBS featuring documentary films made by independent filmmakers. Past seasons of Independent Lens were hosted by Angela Bassett, Don Cheadle, Susan Sarandon, Edie Falco, Terrence Howard, Maggie Gyllenhaal, America Ferrera, Mary-Louise Parker, and Stanley Tucci, who served two stints as host from 2012-2014.
ITVS is a service in the United States which funds and presents documentaries on public television through distribution by PBS and American Public Television, new media projects on the Internet, and the weekly series Independent Lens on PBS. Aside from Independent Lens, ITVS funded and produced films for more than 40 television hours per year on the PBS series POV, Frontline, American Masters and American Experience. Some ITVS programs are produced along with organizations like Latino Public Broadcasting and KQED.
Lauren Greenfield is an American artist, documentary photographer, and documentary filmmaker. She has published photographic monographs, directed documentary features and series, produced traveling exhibitions, and published in magazines throughout the world.
Chicago 10: Speak Your Peace is a 2007 American animated documentary written and directed by Brett Morgen that tells the story of the Chicago Eight. The Chicago Eight were charged by the United States federal government with conspiracy, crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot, and other charges related to anti-Vietnam War and countercultural protests in Chicago, Illinois during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey is a 2012 American documentary film of the band Journey and its new lead vocalist Arnel Pineda.
Imelda is a 2003 documentary film co-produced and directed by Ramona S. Diaz about the life of Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines. Beginning with her childhood, the film documents her marriage to future President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, her rule under the dictatorship, her exile in Hawaii and her eventual return to the Philippines.
Left by the Ship is a 2010 documentary film directed by Emma Rossi Landi and Alberto Vendemmiati following two years in the life of four Filipino Amerasians, co-produced by Italian production company VisitorQ, together with Rai Cinema, ITVS international (USA) and YLE (Finland). The film was shot in the Philippines, mostly in the town of Olongapo, between 2007 and 2009.
Heidi Ewing is an American documentary filmmaker and the co-director of Jesus Camp, The Boys of Baraka, 12th & Delaware, DETROPIA, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, One of Us, Love Fraud (series), I Carry You With Me (narrative) and Endangered.
Matt Wolf is an American filmmaker, documentarian, and producer. His notable films include Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, Teenage, Bayard & Me,Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, and Spaceship Earth. In 2010, he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. His subjects include youth culture, artists, archives, music, and queer history.
Billy Luther is a Native American independent film writer, producer and director. He has made several documentaries and short films. He belongs to the Navajo, Hopi, and Laguna Pueblo tribes. He is known for his movies Frybread Face and Me (2023) and Miss Navajo (2007), and the 2022 television series Dark Winds. Luther identifies as gay.
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 19 to January 29, 2017. The first lineup of competition films was announced November 30, 2016.
Beth Aala is a three-time award-winning American documentary filmmaker and film producer.
Tracy Rector is an American filmmaker, curator, and arts advocate based in Seattle, Washington. She is the executive director and co-founder of Longhouse Media, an Indigenous and POC media arts organization and home of the nationally acclaimed program Native Lens. She has worked as an education consultant at the Seattle Art Museum, as a native naturalist for the Olympic Sculpture Park, and has developed curriculum for IslandWood, an environmental education center.
Johnny Symons is a documentary filmmaker focusing on LGBT cultural and political issues. He is a professor in the Cinema Department at San Francisco State University, where he runs the documentary program and is the director and co-founder of the Queer Cinema Project. He received his BA from Brown University and his MA in documentary production from Stanford University. He has served as a Fellow in the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program.
Marilyn Ness is a documentary film producer and director based in New York City who made the social justice documentaries Bad Blood: A Cautionary Tale (2010), Cameraperson (2016), and Charm City (2018). More recent projects include the Netflix Original documentary Becoming with Michelle Obama, which was nominated for four Primetime Emmy awards and Netflix Original documentary Dick Johnson is Dead, which was on the Academy Award Shortlist for Best Documentary in 2021. She is as of 2021 an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia University.
Feels Good Man is a 2020 American documentary film about the Internet meme Pepe the Frog. Marking the directorial debut of Arthur Jones, the film stars artist Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe. The film follows Furie as he struggles to reclaim control of Pepe from members of the alt-right who have co-opted the image for their own purposes. The film premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and won a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Emerging Filmmaker. It was also nominated in the U.S. Documentary Competition at Sundance. Sometime in the 2020s, ranging from 2023 to 2024, the film was added to FAST service Pluto TV in Canada.
Jennifer Kroot is an American filmmaker whose films include the documentaries It Came From Kuchar (2009) and To Be Takei (2014).
A Thousand Cuts is a 2020 Philippine-American documentary film about Maria Ressa, the founder of the online news site Rappler. Directed by Ramona Diaz, it explores the conflicts between the press and the Filipino government under President Rodrigo Duterte.
Deborah Lum is an American documentary filmmaker based in San Francisco. Her projects frequently explore subject matters within the Asian and Asian American community.
