Viewing Topic: Arts & ArtistsView All
On This Island

by Stephanie Slewka

On an isolated island off the coast of Maine, a disagreement about arts education threatens to tear apart a once close-knit community until a former Broadway producer attempts to heal the rift with an original musical based on the islanders' stories.

Independent Lens

One Night at the Grand Star

by Natasha Uppal

How did L.A.'s Grand Star restaurant become one of the city's liveliest, intergenerational, and culturally-integrated neighborhood nightclubs?

Independent Lens

Operation Filmmaker

by Nina Davenport

Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed — whose school was destroyed by American bombs — lands a dream job working on a Hollywood movie.

Independent Lens

Parliament Funkadelic: One Nation Under a Groove

by Yvonne Smith, Harlene Freezer, and Sharon Davis

Follow one of the most unique and influential groups in music history. From a 1960s barbershop doo-wop group to 1970s masters of funk, through pitfalls, comebacks, to becoming the world's most sampled band, P-Funk continues to perform, record, and funk on into the 21st century.

Independent Lens

Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire

by Barbara Multer-Wellin and Jeff Abelson

Narrated by Tom Brokaw, Paul Conrad: Drawing Fire pays tribute to a legendary journalist and artist who epitomizes the fiercely independent voice that has been vanishing from American news media in recent years.

Independent Lens

Playwright: From Page to Stage

by Robert Levi

The lives of two outstanding young playwrights — one, an African American from Miami’s inner city; the other, an Indian American from Cleveland — are brought together inextricably in the process of creating a new language for the stage.

Independent Lens

The Political Dr. Seuss

by Ron Lamothe

This film explores a little-known side of Dr. Seuss (1904-1991) and his works: How many of his readers know that Yertle the Turtle was modeled on Hitler, or that Horton Hears a Who is a parable about postwar Japan?

Independent Lens

Polka Time

by Lisa Blackstone

Each July for more than 30 years, polka lovers from around the United States have descended on the tiny rural town of Gibbon, Minnesota for the Gibbon Polka Fest.

Independent Lens

Watch it online

Race Is the Place

by Rick Tejada-Flores and Ray Telles

Race Is the Place presents the creative visions of a group of multicultural actors, poets, visual artists and musicians on America’s most pressing social issues.

Independent Lens

Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian

by Neil Diamond

Kemosabe? Loincloths, fringed pants, and feather headdresses? Heap big stereotypes. Reel Injun is an entertaining trip through the evolution of North American Native people ("The Indians") as portrayed in famous Hollywood movies, from the silent era to today. Jim Jarmusch, Clint Eastwood, Graham Greene, John Trudell, and others provide insights into the often demeaning and occasionally hilariously absurd stereotypes perpetuated on the big screen through Hollywood's history.

Independent Lens

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