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P-Star Rising

by Gabriel Noble

Rapper Priscilla Diaz was dazzling New York nightclub crowds at age nine. But chasing music stardom isn’t child’s play when you live in a shelter, your mom’s an addict, and your dad’s struggling to keep the family afloat.

Independent Lens

Watch it online

The Paper

by Aaron Matthews

Through the eyes of Pennsylvania State University’s students, The Paper takes an in-depth look at the challenges facing the journalists of tomorrow.

Independent Lens

Please Vote for Me

by Weijun Chen

Please Vote for Me follows 8-year-old students in an elementary school in China as they campaign for class monitor.

Independent Lens, Global Voices, Global Perspectives Collection

Precious Knowledge

by Ari Luis Palos and Eren Isabel McGinnis

When a highly successful Mexican American Studies program at a high school in Tucson comes under fire for teaching ethnic chauvinism, teachers and students fight back in a modern civil rights struggle.

Independent Lens

Pushing the Elephant

by Beth Davenport and Elizabeth Mandel

A story of forgiveness, hope, and the joy of family life, Pushing the Elephant captures one woman’s mission for peace in her country beset by genocidal violence.

Women of the World, Global Perspectives Collection, Women and Girls Lead, Independent Lens

Refugee

by Spencer Nakasako

Three young Cambodian American men return to the land of their roots wielding video cameras to document their experience of meeting fathers, sisters, and brothers for the first time.

Global Voices, Independent Lens

The Revolutionary Optimists

by Nicole Newnham and Maren Grainger-Monsen

Amlan Ganguly, a lawyer-turned social entrepreneur, has sown hope in the poorest neighborhoods of Calcutta by empowering children to become leaders in improving health, transforming their communities for the better.

Women of the World, Women and Girls Lead, Independent Lens

Sentenced Home

by Nicole Newnham and David Grabias

Raised as Americans in inner-city projects near Seattle, three young Cambodian men are deported back to Cambodia, caught between a tragic past and an uncertain future by a system that doesn't offer any second chances.

Global Voices, Independent Lens

Upcoming broadcasts Watch it online

Short Stack 2006 with "My Life ... Disoriented"

by Eric Byler, Claire Yorita Lee, Di Quon, Liza Suh, Jasmin Gordon, Mai Heiselmann, and Mike Blum

Four films — including the two grand prize-winners of the first Independent Lens Online Shorts Festival — explore questions of love, displacement, belonging, and identity. Short Stack 2006 looks at the rise and fall of a boy's first zit, uprooted sisters taking on a new school, revelations about a mourned father, and country-western romance, Japanese style.

Independent Lens

Short, Not Sweet

By Robert Slane, Timothy Greenberg, Louise Johnson, David Fukushima, Matthew Miller, Ezra Krybus, and Jamie Travis

This short film "medley" includes Fine Line Between Cute and Creepy, La Puppe, A Monster's Calling, The School, and Why the Anderson Children Didn't Come to Dinner.

Independent Lens