Independent Lens

The Best Episodes of Independent Lens

Genre:Documentary
Network:PBS

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...
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  1. 9.5/10(15 votes)

    #1 - Taking the Heat: The First Women Firefighters of New York City

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    S7:E18

    No description available

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    Director:N/A
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  2. 9.4/10(22 votes)

    #2 - Almost Home

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    S7:E15

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    Director:N/A
    Writer:N/A
  3. 9.2/10(28 votes)

    #3 - Fishbowl; American Made

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    S7:E23

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    Director:N/A
    Writer:N/A
  4. 9.0/10(1 votes)

    #4 - 1971

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    S16:E17

    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 that they then shared with members of Congress and the news media. Among the finds: evidence that the FBI spied on dissident political groups. The documentary includes remarks from members of the Citizens' Commission.

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    Director:N/A
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  5. 8.9/10(19 votes)

    #5 - India's Daughter

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    S17:E2

    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.

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    Director:Leslee Udwin
    Writer:N/A
  6. 8.6/10(10 votes)

    #6 - July '64

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    S7:E14

    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.

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    Director:Carvin Eison
    Writer:N/A
  7. Trending NowTRENDING NOW

    The 20 WORST Episodes of Independent Lens

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  8. 8.6/10(20 votes)

    #7 - Muscle Shoals

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    S15:E17

    How a small town in Alabama became influential in the music of Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Aretha Franklin.

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    Director:N/A
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  9. 8.5/10(47 votes)

    #8 - A Touch of Greatness

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    S6:E10

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    Director:N/A
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  10. 8.5/10(7 votes)

    #9 - We Were Here

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    S13:E26

    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.

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  11. 8.4/10(8 votes)

    #10 - How to Survive a Plague

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    S15:E7

    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.

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    Director:N/A
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  12. 8.3/10(11 votes)

    #11 - Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream

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    S14:E6

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    Director:Alex Gibney
    Writer:N/A
  13. 8.3/10(19 votes)

    #12 - The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

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    S17:E10

    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.

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  14. 8.3/10(13 votes)

    #13 - What Was Ours

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    S18:E5

    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.

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    Director:N/A
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  15. 8.3/10(9 votes)

    #14 - Rewind

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    S21:E16

    Made up of home video footage that reveals a long-kept secret, Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s Rewind is a brave and wrenching look at his childhood and his journey to reconcile his past. By probing the gap between image and reality, the film depicts both how little and how much a camera can capture.

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    Director:N/A
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  16. 8.2/10(12 votes)

    #15 - These Amazing Shadows

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    S13:E7

    "These Amazing Shadows" focuses on the National Film Registry, an eclectic collection of movies considered to be "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the National Film Preservation Board. Included: clips from many of the films; remarks from Librarian of Congress James Billington; such directors as Barbara Kopple, Christopher Nolan, Rob Reiner, John Singleton and John Waters; such actors as Tim Roth, Debbie Reynolds and Zooey Deschanel; and film critics and historians.

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    Director:N/A
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  17. 8.2/10(5 votes)

    #16 - Bedlam

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    S21:E13

    Shot over the course of five years, Bedlam examines the mental health crisis through intimate stories of those people who are in-and-out of overwhelmed and under-resourced psych emergency rooms, jails and homeless camps in Los Angeles, while psychiatrist and filmmaker Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D. also searches for answers to his own late sister’s mental illness.

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    Director:N/A
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  18. 8.2/10(8 votes)

    #17 - Minted

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    S26:E8

    An insider’s look at the rise and fall of the NFT (non-fungible token) phenomenon and how technology transformed the traditional art world, for better and worse. Featuring verité footage and candid interviews with groundbreaking artists—like Beeple, Latasha Alcindor, and Loish— at the center of this phenomenon, Minted delves into the complex world of the $40 billion NFT digital art market.

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    Director:N/A
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  19. 8.1/10(12 votes)

    #18 - A Hard Straight

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    S6:E9

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    Director:N/A
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  20. 8.1/10(21 votes)

    #19 - Chicago 10

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    S10:E1

    This program combines bold and original animation with extraordinary archival footage to explore the build-up to and unraveling of the Chicago Conspiracy Trial. Set to the music of revolution, then and now, the film features the vocal talents of Hank Azaria, Mark Ruffalo, Dylan Baker, Liev Schreiber, Nick Nolte, Jeffrey Wright and Roy Scheider. A parable of hope, courage and victory, this program is the story of young Americans speaking out.

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  21. 8.1/10(41 votes)

    #20 - Love Free or Die

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    S14:E4

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    Director:N/A
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  22. 8.1/10(12 votes)

    #21 - At Berkeley

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    S15:E8

    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 member of a ten campus public education system.

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    Director:N/A
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  23. 8.1/10(9 votes)

    #22 - Autism in Love

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    S17:E6

    Finding love can be hard enough for anyone, but for those on the autism spectrum, the challenges may seem overwhelming. The disorder can jeopardize the core characteristics of a successful relationship — communication and social interaction. Autism in Love offers a warm and stereotype-shattering look at four people with autism as they pursue and manage romantic relationships.

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    Director:N/A
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  24. 8.0/10(1 votes)

    #23 - Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

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    S8:E22

    Enron dives from the seventh largest US company to bankruptcy in less than a year in this tale told chronologically. The emphasis is on human drama, from suicide to 20,000 people sacked: the personalities of Ken Lay (with Falwellesque rectitude), Jeff Skilling (he of big ideas), Lou Pai (gone with $250 M), and Andy Fastow (the dark prince) dominate. Along the way, we watch Enron game California's deregulated electricity market, get a free pass from Arthur Andersen (which okays the dubious mark-to-market accounting), use greed to manipulate banks and brokerages (Merrill Lynch fires the analyst who questions Enron's rise), and hear from both Presidents Bush what great guys these are.

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    Director:Alex Gibney
  25. 8.0/10(7 votes)

    #24 - Revenge of the Electric Car

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    S13:E19

    Revenge follows four entrepreneurs from 2007 through the end of 2010 as they fight to bring the electric car back to the world market in the midst of a global recession. The protagonists are Bob Lutz from General Motors, Elon Musk from the American start-up Tesla Motors, Carlos Ghosn from Nissan, and Greg Abbott, an independent electric car converter from California. Whereas the 2006 film Who Killed the Electric Car? ended with the destruction of nearly 5,000 electric cars from California's clean air program, notably the GM EV1, the new film features the birth of a new generation of electric cars including the Chevrolet Volt, the Nissan Leaf and the Tesla Roadster.

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    Director:N/A
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  26. 8.0/10(1 votes)

    #25 - The Great Invisible

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    S16:E14

    First hand accounts of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and its impact on the Gulf of Mexico.

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    Director:N/A
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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".