Independent Lens: Season 16
Season 16 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 15.
- 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 16 Progress Shield
Bully
Oct 13, 2014 · 60 min
The story of the children bullied at school and online. The film questions assumptions about bullying behaviour beyond cliches and stereotypes of the past. It also examines changes
Twin Sisters
Oct 20, 2014 · 60 min
Two sisters adopted in China as infants by Californian and Norwegian parents grow up knowing they have a twin living on the other side of the world. Although language is a barrier,
Brakeless
Oct 27, 2014 · 60 min
In April, 2005 a Japanese train engineer accelerated beyond permissible speeds in order to make up an 80-second delay. Brakeless examines the aftermath and questions if Japan is cu
Powerless
Nov 3, 2014 · 60 min
Powerless tracks the battle between an Indian electric company and a renegade electrician who illegally connects poor families to the grid.
Happiness
Nov 17, 2014 · 60 min
A nine-year-old child in Burma is spurred to leave his village for the first time in his life when his village gets electricity. He walks for over three days to in search of a seei
Rich Hill
Jan 5, 2015 · 60 min
Rich Hill, winner of the 2014 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary, goes inside the homes and lives of small town America, where kids confront heartbreaking
Evolution of a Criminal
Jan 12, 2015 · 60 min
Tens years after robbing a Bank of America, filmmaker Darius Monroe explores what led him to pull a heist as a teenager in Texas, and returns to the scene of the crime. In this gri
The Kill Team / Confusion Through Sand
Jan 19, 2015 · 60 min
Winner of the Best Documentary Feature award at the Tribeca Film Festival, The Kill Team tells the harrowing story of Specialist Adam Winfield, a 21-year-old infantryman in Afghani
Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People
Feb 16, 2015 · 60 min
For the last 170 years, pioneering African American photographers — men and women, celebrated and anonymous — have recorded the dramas and aspirations of generations. Through a Len
American Denial
Feb 23, 2015 · 60 min
In the wake of recent events that have sparked a national dialogue, American Denial explores the power of unconscious biases around race and class. Using Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 inves
Little White Lie
Mar 23, 2015 · 60 min
Lacey Schwartz grew up in an upper-middle-class household with two loving Jewish parents. When she discovers that the man she's always assumed was her father is not her biological
Little Hope Was Arson / A City in Flames
Apr 6, 2015 · 60 min
The investigation into a spate of church burnings that occured in East Texas during January and February 2010 is chronicled.
The Homestretch
Apr 13, 2015 · 60 min
Three homeless Chicago teens strive to graduate from high school despite the difficulties inherent in their situations.
The Great Invisible
Apr 20, 2015 · 60 min
First hand accounts of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and its impact on the Gulf of Mexico.
Kumu Hina
May 4, 2015 · 60 min
A Hawaiian transgender woman finds acceptance, but still is searching for love.
Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity
May 11, 2015 · 60 min
Examining daredevil choreographer Elizabeth Streb and her STREB Extreme Action Company. Included: the evolution of her philosophy, which challenges assumptions about art, aging, in
1971
May 18, 2015 · 60 min
The story of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, which broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pa., on the night of March 8, 1971, and stole hundreds of secret files
Limited Partnership
Jun 15, 2015 · 60 min
Married in 1975, Richard and Tony lead a 40-year fight for legal immigration status for same sex spouses.
In the Shadow of Ebola
Jun 22, 2015 · 60 min
An African family’s tense experience during West African Ebola outbreak. This intimate film brings us on Emmanuel’s journey as he battles to keep his wife and children safe while t