9.5/1015 votesLoading...#1 - Taking the Heat: The First Women Firefighters of New York City
Season 7 Episode 18 - Aired 3/28/2006
No description available
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 9.4/1022 votesLoading...
#2 - Almost Home
Season 7 Episode 15 - Aired 2/21/2006
No description available
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 9.3/1061 votesLoading...
#3 - Billy Strayhorn: Lush Life
Season 8 Episode 14 - Aired 2/6/2007
No description available
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 9.2/1028 votesLoading...
#4 - Fishbowl; American Made
Season 7 Episode 23 - Aired 5/9/2006
No description available
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.9/1019 votesLoading...#5 - India's Daughter
Season 17 Episode 2 - Aired 11/16/2015
The story of the brutal gang rape and murder in Delhi of 23-year-old medical student Jyoti Singh, which sparked outrage and protests in India, a country beset by extreme poverty and gender inequality.
Director: Leslee Udwin
Writer: N/A
8.8/109 votesLoading...#6 - Bully
Season 16 Episode 1 - Aired 10/13/2014
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 in how schools treat the perpetrators and victims.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.8/105 votesLoading...#7 - Love in the Time of Fentanyl
Season 24 Episode 9 - Aired 2/13/2023
As fentanyl overdose deaths in Vancouver, Canada reach an all-time high, the Overdose Prevention Society opens its doors—a renegade safe injection site that employs current or former drug users. Its staff and volunteers save lives and give hope to a marginalized community, doing whatever it takes to remain open in this intimate documentary that looks beyond the stigma of injection drug users.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.7/108 votesLoading...
#8 - China Blue
Season 8 Episode 20 - Aired 4/3/2007
They live crowded together in cement factory dormitories where water has to be carried upstairs in buckets. Their meals and rent are deducted from their wages, which amount to less than a dollar a day. Most of the jeans they make in the factory are purchased by retailers in the U.S. and other countries. China Blue takes viewers inside a blue jeans factory in southern China, where teenage workers struggle to survive harsh working conditions. Providing perspectives from both the top and bottom levels of the factory’s hierarchy, the film looks at complex issues of globalization from the human level. China Blue, which was made without permission from the Chinese authorities, offers an alarming report on the economic pressures applied by Western companies and the resulting human consequences, as the real profits are made—and kept—in first-world countries. The unexpected ending makes the connection between the exploited workers and U.S. consumers even clearer.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.6/1055 votesLoading...
#9 - Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes
Season 8 Episode 16 - Aired 2/20/2007
Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is a 2006 documentary film written, produced, and directed by Byron Hurt. The documentary explores the issues of masculinity, violence, homophobia and sexism in hip hop music and culture, through interviews with artists, academics and fans. Hurt's activism in gender issues and his love of hip-hop caused him to feel what he described as a sense of hypocrisy, and began working on the film.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.6/108 votesLoading...#10 - Matter of Mind: My ALS
Season 24 Episode 13 - Aired 5/1/2023
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neuromuscular disease with an average survival time of 2-5 years from diagnosis. In this intimate exploration, three people with ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, bravely face different paths as they live with this progressively debilitating illness.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.6/1015 votesLoading...#11 - Beyond Utopia
Season 25 Episode 7 - Aired 1/9/2024
They grew up believing their land was paradise. Now, they risk everything in escaping it. In an unforgettable documentary, follow families on a treacherous journey to defect from their homeland of North Korea, as the threat of severe punishment and possible execution looms over their passage, revealing a world many have never seen.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.5/1047 votesLoading...
#12 - A Touch of Greatness
Season 6 Episode 10 - Aired 1/11/2005
No description available
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.5/107 votesLoading...
#13 - We Were Here
Season 13 Episode 26 - Aired 6/7/2012
When AIDS arrived in San Francisco in 1981, it decimated a community, but also brought people together in inspiring and moving ways to support and care for one another and to fight for dignity and a cure.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.5/1019 votesLoading...#14 - Muscle Shoals
Season 15 Episode 17 - Aired 3/31/2014
How a small town in Alabama became influential in the music of Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Aretha Franklin.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.5/1024 votesLoading...#15 - Twin Sisters
Season 16 Episode 2 - Aired 10/20/2014
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, their bond grows deeper and they arrange to finally meet.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.5/1029 votesLoading...#16 - American Denial
Season 16 Episode 10 - Aired 2/23/2015
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 investigation of Jim Crow racism as a springboard, the film shows how unrecognized, unconscious attitudes continue to dominate racial dynamics in American life.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.4/1054 votesLoading...
#17 - Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore?
Season 8 Episode 17 - Aired 2/27/2007
Can Mr. Smith Get to Washington Anymore? is a 2006 documentary film written by Matt Coen, Mike Kime and Frank Popper and directed by Frank Popper.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.4/1024 votesLoading...
#18 - Reel Injun: On the Trail of the Hollywood Indian
Season 12 Episode 3 - Aired 11/2/2010
The portrayal of Native Americans in cinema. / Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond takes an entertaining, insightful, and often humorous look at the Hollywood Indian, exploring the portrayal of North American Natives through a century of cinema and examining the myth of "the Injun." Narrated by Diamond with infectious enthusiasm and good humor, this film is a loving look at cinema through the eyes of the people who appeared in its very first flickering images and have survived to tell their stories their own way.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.4/108 votesLoading...
#19 - How to Survive a Plague
Season 15 Episode 7 - Aired 12/30/2013
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 condition. Despite having no scientific training, these determined activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry to help identify promising new drugs and move them from experimental trials to patients. With unfettered access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage, the film reveals the controversial actions, heated meetings, heartbreaking failures and exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making. By David France.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.4/109 votesLoading...#20 - Kumu Hina
Season 16 Episode 15 - Aired 5/4/2015
A Hawaiian transgender woman finds acceptance, but still is searching for love.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.4/109 votesLoading...#21 - Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Season 20 Episode 11 - Aired 2/11/2019
RaMell Ross's Hale County This Morning, This Evening, one of the year's most critically acclaimed films, is a dreamy and intimate journey through the world of Hale County, Alabama, a richly detailed glimpse into life in America’s Black Belt.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
- 8.3/109 votesLoading...
#22 - July '64
Season 7 Episode 14 - Aired 2/14/2006
July ’64 tells the story of a historic three-day race riot that erupted in two African American neighborhoods in the northern, mid-sized city of Rochester, New York. On the night of July 24, 1964, frustration and resentment brought on by institutional racism, overcrowding, lack of job opportunity and police dog attacks exploded in racial violence that brought Rochester to its knees. Directed by Carvin Eison and produced by Chris Christopher, JULY ’64 combines historic archival footage, news reports and interviews with witnesses and participants to dig deeply into the causes and effects of the historic disturbance.
Director: Carvin Eison
Writer: N/A
- 8.3/1011 votesLoading...
#23 - Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream
Season 14 Episode 6 - Aired 11/12/2012
No description available
Director: Alex Gibney
Writer: N/A
8.3/1019 votesLoading...#24 - The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Season 17 Episode 10 - Aired 2/16/2016
Weaving together a treasure trove of rare footage with the voices of a diverse group of people who were there, Stanley Nelson tells the vibrant story of a pivotal movement as urgent today as it was then.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
8.3/1013 votesLoading...#25 - What Was Ours
Season 18 Episode 5 - Aired 1/16/2017
Residents of Wyoming's isolated Wind River Indian Reservation, a young Arapaho journalist, and a teenage powwow princess travel with a Shoshone elder to search for missing artifacts in the vast archives of Chicago's Field Museum. There they discover a treasure trove of ancestral objects, setting them on a journey to recover what has been lost, and build hope for the future.
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
The Best Episodes of Independent Lens
Every episode of Independent Lens ranked from best to worst. Let's dive into the Best Episodes of Independent Lens!
This acclaimed Emmy Award-winning anthology series features documentaries and a limited number of fiction films united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement and unflinching visions...
Genre:Documentary
Network:PBS
Best Episodes Summary
"Taking the Heat: The First Women Firefighters of New York City" is the best rated episode of "Independent Lens". It scored 9.5/10 based on 15 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 3/28/2006. This episode scored 0.1 points higher than the second highest rated, "Almost Home".