Independent Lens: Season 15
Season 15 Lore Primer
Key plot threads, lore context, and character stakes you need to remember before diving into this season.
- Directly follows the overarching narrative developments of Independent Lens Season 14.
- Faction dynamics and core character alliances shift under escalating external stakes.
- Crucial mysteries introduced previously reach key turning points and narrative reckonings.
- Sets up serialized story arcs that build directly toward the climactic season finale.
Episode Guide
Season 15 Progress Shield
The Graduates - The Girls
Oct 28, 2013 · 60 min
Part 1 of 2. The Latino dropout crisis is examined through the eyes of six students from across the U.S., beginning with three young women. One left school after becoming pregnant,
The Graduates - The Boys
Nov 4, 2013 · 60 min
Conclusion. The Latino dropout crisis is seen through the eyes of three young men. One, whose parents moved from Mexico to San Diego so that he and his siblings could have a better
Indian Relay
Nov 18, 2013 · 60 min
Episode Synopsis: "Indian Relay" chronicles a season of Indian relay-horse races, which are popular within Native American communities across the Rocky Mountain West. Teams from th
Young Lakota
Nov 25, 2013 · 60 min
Three young people living in the Pine Ridge Reservation try to forge a better future. When the first female president of Oglala Lakota defies a South Dakota law criminalizing abort
Playwright: From Page to Stage
Dec 16, 2013 · 60 min
The lives of two outstanding young playwrights — an African American from Miami’s inner city and an Indian American from Cleveland — are brought together inextricably in the proces
Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Dec 23, 2013 · 60 min
Eighty-five-year-old Jiro Ono, considered the world’s greatest sushi chef, is the proprietor of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a 10-seat restaurant inauspiciously located in a Tokyo subway stat
How to Survive a Plague
Dec 30, 2013 · 60 min
This acclaimed film tells the story of ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group), two groups whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable conditi
At Berkeley
Jan 13, 2014 · 60 min
Legendary documentarian Frederick Wiseman goes back to school for this intimate yet sprawling film about the University of California at Berkeley, the oldest and most prestigious m
Blood Brother
Jan 20, 2014 · 60 min
An intimate portrait of Rocky Braat, who travels to India as a disillusioned tourist. When he meets a group of HIV-positive children living at an AIDS hostel, a place of unspeakabl
The State of Arizona
Jan 27, 2014 · 60 min
The turbulent battle over illegal immigration in Arizona that came to a head with Senate Bill 1070 frames this riveting documentary that tracks multiple perspectives as America eye
Spies of Mississippi
Feb 10, 2014 · 60 min
The story of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, a secret agency created by the state during the 1950s to spy on its citizens and maintain segregation. Included: remarks from a
Las Marthas
Feb 17, 2014 · 60 min
Dating from the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, the annual debutante ball in Laredo, Texas is unlike any other. Las Marthas follows two Mexican American girls carrying this
All of Me: A Story of Love, Loss, and Last Resorts
Mar 24, 2014 · 60 min
A group of women friends who met via the Austin chapter of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance and have tried every diet and diet pill, go through weight-loss surger
Medora
May 31, 2014 · 60 min
The story of a high school basketball team suffering from a long losing streak in a small town.
Brother's Hypnotic
Mar 17, 2014 · 60 min
Eight brothers who were forged into a band as children by their father, Chicago jazz maverick Phil Cohran, now try to march to their own beat on the streets of New York and in the
The Trials of Muhammad Ali
Mar 24, 2014 · 60 min
The story of the explosive crossroads of Muhammad Ali’s life, after the famed boxer’s conversion to Islam and refusal to serve in the Vietnam War left him banned from boxing and fa
Muscle Shoals
Mar 31, 2014 · 60 min
How a small town in Alabama became influential in the music of Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Aretha Franklin.
A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at The New York Times
Apr 7, 2014 · 60 min
A Fragile Trust tells the shocking story of Jayson Blair, the most infamous serial plagiarist of our time, and how he unleashed the massive scandal that rocked The New York Times a
Let the Fire Burn
Apr 14, 2014 · 60 min
This documentary brings to life one of the most tumultuous clashes between government and citizens in modern U.S. history, as a longtime feud between Philadelphia police and radica
God Loves Uganda
May 5, 2014 · 60 min
Inspired by his own African American Baptist roots, director Roger Ross Williams explores a place where religion and African culture intersect, as Ugandan and American pastors spre
The New Black
Jun 16, 2014 · 60 min
How African-American churches and gays deal with the rise of the gay-rights movement.