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Independent Lens on IMDB
First Aired: August 9th, 1999
Status: Continuing
Network: PBS
Summary: 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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# of Episodes: 502
# of Episodes I watched: 0
# of Episodes I haven't watched: 502
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Season 23
Episode 1: Cured
Air Date: October 11st, 2021
Summary: When doctors classified homosexuality as a mental illness to be “cured,” they employed cruel treatments like electroshock and lobotomies. LGBTQ+ activists and their allies fought back — and won a momentous victory when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its manual of mental disorders in 1973.
Episode 2: Ferguson Rises
Air Date: November 8th, 2021
Summary: How does a father find purpose in pain? In 2014, Michael Brown Sr.’s son was killed by white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, an event that fueled the global Black Lives Matter movement. But his personal story seeking justice and healing has not been told until now.
Episode 3: Storm Lake
Air Date: November 15th, 2021
Summary: Does American democracy survive without the backbone of independent local journalism? Go inside The Storm Lake Times, a newspaper serving an Iowa town that has seen its fair share of changes in the 40 years since Big Agriculture came to the area. Pulitzer-winning editor Art Cullen and his family dedicate themselves to keeping the paper alive as local journalism across the country dies out.
Episode 4: Duty Free
Air Date: November 22nd, 2021
Summary: 75-year-old Rebecca loses the only job she's even known. She has no savings, no 401K safety net, and no employment prospects. Rebecca teams up with son Sian-Pierre to take the trip of a lifetime, one bucket list adventure at a time. Her journey uncovers the economic insecurity faced by millions of Americans.
Episode 5: Home From School: The Children of Carlisle
Air Date: November 23rd, 2021
Summary: "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.” This was the guiding principle that removed thousands of Native American children and placed them in Indian boarding schools. Among the many who died at Carlisle Indian Industrial School were three Northern Arapaho boys. Now, more than a century later, tribal members journey from Wyoming to Pennsylvania to help them finally come home.
Episode 6: A Reckoning in Boston
Air Date: January 17th, 2022
Summary: What happens when you discover that your assumptions are flawed? A white filmmaker starts his academic inquiry by documenting low-income, adult students of color at the Clemente Course in Boston. After time, he comes to terms with his own complicity in racism. Alongside students, a unique filmmaking collaboration forms to explore the area's history of racism and gentrification.
Episode 7: Missing in Brooks County
Air Date: January 31st, 2022
Summary: Migrants go missing in rural South Texas more than anywhere else in the U.S. For many families whose loved ones have disappeared after crossing the Mexico border, activist detective Eddie Canales is their last hope. Unlock the mysteries and confront the agonizing facts of life and death in Brooks County, 80 miles north of the border.
Episode 8: Owned: A Tale of Two Americas
Air Date: February 7th, 2022
Summary: Is the "American Dream" of home ownership a false promise? While the government’s postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class, it also set America on two divergent paths – one of perceived wealth and the other of systematically defunded, segregated communities.
Episode 9: Bulletproof
Air Date: February 14th, 2022
Summary: What is the cost of feeling safe? In an era of mass shootings, lockdown drills and teacher firearms training are as much a part of life as homecoming dances and basketball practice. Take a provocative look at fear, violence, and what Americans will do to feel safe in schools.
Episode 10: Apart
Air Date: February 21st, 2022
Summary: Since the beginning of the War on Drugs, the number of women in U.S. prisons has grown drastically. The majority are mothers. Three unforgettable formerly incarcerated mothers, jailed for drug-related charges, fight to overcome alienation—and a society that labels them "felons"—to readjust to life with their families.
Episode 11: Writing With Fire
Air Date: March 28th, 2022
Summary: In a male-dominated media landscape, the women journalists of India's all-female Khabar Lahariya ("News Wave") newspaper risk it all, including their own safety, to cover the country's political, social, and local news from a women-powered perspective. From underground network to independent media empire, they defy the odds to redefine power. Nominated for an Academy Award.
Episode 12: AWARE: Glimpses of Consciousness
Air Date: April 4th, 2022
Summary: What is the science behind consciousness? Six brilliant researchers from around the world—a brain scientist, a plant behaviorist, a healer, a philosophy professor, a psychedelics scientist, and a Buddhist monk—take you on a mind-blowing quest to investigate this seemingly unsolvable mystery.
Episode 13: Try Harder!
Air Date: May 2nd, 2022
Summary: At Lowell High School, San Francisco's academic pressure cooker, the kids are stressed out. With a majority Asian American student body, high-achieving seniors share their dreams and anxieties about getting into a top university. But is college worth the grind?
Episode 14: When Claude Got Shot
Air Date: May 9th, 2022
Summary: In Milwaukee, a 15-year-old attempted to carjack law student Claude Motley and shot him in the face. Through multiple surgeries and catastrophic health care bills, the effects of gun violence upends Claude’s life. Yet he still finds himself torn between punishment for the young man and the injustice of mass incarceration for Black men and boys. Can he find mercy in his heart for his attacker?
Episode 15: Scenes From The Glittering World
Air Date: May 16th, 2022
Summary: Three Indigenous students experience the highs and lows of adolescence while attending one of the most remote high schools in the United States. Living in the uniquely beautiful but isolated Diné community within the Navajo Nation reservation, they navigate life as teenagers and dream of a glittering future.
Episode 16: Hazing
Air Date: September 12nd, 2022
Summary: Explore how abusive rituals reflect our desire to belong—even if taken to sometimes deadly lengths.
Episode 17: TikTok, Boom.
Air Date: October 24th, 2022
Summary: Explore the power and complexity of technology through the lens of TikTok and the Gen Z influencers who know it best.
Episode 18: Move Me
Air Date: November 7th, 2022
Summary: A dancer paralyzed with a spinal cord injury tests the limits of her recovery while adapting to life with a disability.
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