Independent Lens

Stories

“Sam Now”: a real-life, missing-mom adventure

A quarter-century ago, a cinematic duo was created.
Reed Harkness was then 18 and had just found his dad’s old super-8 camera. Sam Harkness, his half-brother, was 11 and ready for anything.
“He was this very resilient kid,” Reed told the Television Critics Association. “He was always taking falls and then getting right back up again.”
They made goofy films with Sam as The Blue Panther, forever crashing, smashing and surviving. Then they made a dead-serious one about surviving something in real life: When Sam and his older brother Jared were in their early teens, their mother simply vanished.
In a way, Reed “spent 25 years making ‘Sam Now,’” said producer Lois Vossen. Her “Independent Lens” series will show the documentary (shown here) at 10 p.m. next Monday (May 8) on most PBS stations. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / May 1, 2023
Stories

A passionate story percolated for decades

Some stories leap quickly from real life to the TV or movie screen.
Then there’s “Free Chol Soo Lee,” the involving documentary that debuts at 10 p.m. Monday on PBS’ “Independent Lens.” It percolated in Julie Ha’s mind for somewhere close to four decades.
That started with Korean-American reporter K.W. Lee, she told the Television Critics Association. “I was 18 years old and he inspired me to want to become a journalist.”
His stories helped spark a retrial. In 1983, after a decade in prison, Chol Soo Lee (shown here, center) was free.
Much later, in 2014, Ha went to the ex-prisoner’s funeral. “K.W, Lee stood up,” she said, “and he was clutching this Buddhist monk’s walking stick that Chol Soo had carved for him out of a tree. And he said, ‘Why is this story underground after all these years?’” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / April 21, 2023
News and Quick Comments

Oscar documentaries are on TV now

In the aftermath of the Academy Awards, we can still see some of the nominated documentaries.
Short docs? The winner (“The Queen of Basketball”) airs at 6:30 p.m. Monday (March 28) on the NBA channel; another nominee, “When We Were Bullies,” is 9 p.m. Wednesday on HBO.
Feature-length docs? “Writing with Fire” (shown here) has its TV debut at 10 p.m. March 28 on most PBS stations, under the “Independent Lens” umbrella. With that in mind, I’ll rerun a recent story I wrote about “Fire” and “Lens”: Read more…

By Mike Hughes / March 28, 2022
Stories

Documentaries thrive — at Oscar time and beyond

At Oscar time, our attention drifts to top names – Spielberg and Kidman and Denzel and such.
But maybe we’ll also notice Meera Devi and Suneeta Prajapati and others. They’re at the core of “Writing with Fire” (shown here) which is up for an Oscar (best documentary feature) on Sunday, March 27, then reaches PBS’ “Independent Lens” at 10 p.m. the next day.
“The extremely brave actions of these young women is amazing,” Lois Vossen, who started “Lens” 23 years ago, said by phone. “I don’t know whether I would have the guts to do what they do.”
They report for a print-and-online news agency in rural India. They are women from the Dalit caste (previously called “untouchables”), confronting people who distrust women and Dalit and maybe the news in general. Read more…

By Mike Hughes / March 19, 2022
Stories

Film takes a fierce view of China’s one-child past

This isn’t what a filmmaker expects her mother to say at a premiere.
Nanfu Wang was presenting “One Child Nation,” which would go on to big things. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and debuts Monday (March 30) on PBS.
The film takes a fierce look at the policy that dominated China for 36 years, using everything from propoganda (shown here) to punishment, limiting families to one (and in some cases two) children. It offered horror stories of forced sterilizations and abortions, of children abandoned or sold.
American audiences tend to be horrified. And the reaction of Wang’s mother, who was a Chinese villager during the that era? “At the premiere Q&A, somebody asked her what she thought about it,” Wang said. “And she said, ‘Well, I think the film is great …. But I still believe the one-child policy was necessary.’ And that was surprising to me and surprising to everyone.” Read more…

By Mike Hughes / March 27, 2020