NaN/100 votes#1 - The Graduates - The Girls
Season 15 Episode 1 - Aired 10/28/2013
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, but has since enrolled in a Tulsa program for at-risk students; another has enjoyed better grades and become more active in school activities since joining the innovative Voices of Youth in Chicago Education program; and the third was helped by the staff at her South Bronx high school after her family became homeless.
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NaN/100 votes#2 - The Graduates - The Boys
Season 15 Episode 2 - Aired 11/4/2013
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 education, fell into gang life before turning his life around, due in large part to the Reality Changers organization; another, the son of undocumented workers, overcame barriers in order to attend college; and the third may well have quit school except for the performing arts, which helped boost his confidence.
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NaN/100 votes#3 - Indian Relay
Season 15 Episode 3 - Aired 11/18/2013
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 the Shoshone-Bannock, Crow and Blackfeet nations in Idaho and Montana are featured. The races feature riders leaping from horse to horse after the first two laps of a three-lap race around a track, with each team's handlers catching the dismounted horse or risk being disqualified.
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- 7.5/109 votes
#4 - Young Lakota
Season 15 Episode 4 - Aired 11/25/2013
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 abortion by vowing to build a women’s clinic in their sovereign territory, the three young tribe members are faced with difficult choices.
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- 7.4/1020 votes
#5 - Playwright: From Page to Stage
Season 15 Episode 5 - Aired 12/16/2013
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 process of creating a new language for the stage. By Robert Levi.
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- 7.9/1010 votes
#6 - Jiro Dreams of Sushi
Season 15 Episode 6 - Aired 12/23/2013
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 station. Despite its humble appearance, it is the first restaurant of its kind to be awarded a three-star Michelin Guide rating, and sushi lovers from around the globe make pilgrimages. “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” is a thoughtful and elegant meditation on work, family and the art of perfection. By David Gelb.
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- 8.4/108 votes
#7 - 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.
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- 8.1/1012 votes
#8 - At Berkeley
Season 15 Episode 8 - Aired 1/13/2014
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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- 7.5/108 votes
#9 - Blood Brother
Season 15 Episode 9 - Aired 1/20/2014
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 unspeakable hardship, he decides to stay and devote his life to them.
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- 6.0/108 votes
#10 - The State of Arizona
Season 15 Episode 10 - Aired 1/27/2014
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 eyes the results.
Director: N/A
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- 6.2/1012 votes
#11 - Spies of Mississippi
Season 15 Episode 11 - Aired 2/10/2014
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 author Rick Bowers ("Spies of Mississippi"); civil rights activists Margaret Block, Lawrence Guyot, Bob Moses and Hollis Watkins; Rev. Ed King, author Neil R. McMillen ("Dark Journey"); journalist Jerry Mitchell; Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.); and former Mississippi governor William Winter.
Director: N/A
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- NaN/100 votes
#12 - Las Marthas
Season 15 Episode 12 - Aired 2/17/2014
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 gilded tradition on their shoulders during a time of economic uncertainty and tension over immigration.
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- NaN/100 votes
#13 - All of Me: A Story of Love, Loss, and Last Resorts
Season 15 Episode 13 - Aired 3/24/2014
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 surgery in an effort to lose hundreds of pounds. The experience presents a host of issues and consequences, some they never could have imagined.
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- NaN/100 votes
#14 - Medora
Season 15 Episode 14 - Aired 5/31/2014
The story of a high school basketball team suffering from a long losing streak in a small town.
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- NaN/100 votes
#15 - Brother's Hypnotic
Season 15 Episode 15 - Aired 3/17/2014
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 music business as the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble.
Director: N/A
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- 6.2/1015 votes
#16 - The Trials of Muhammad Ali
Season 15 Episode 16 - Aired 3/24/2014
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 facing a five-year prison sentence.
Director: N/A
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8.6/1020 votes#17 - 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
- 7.0/108 votes
#18 - A Fragile Trust: Plagiarism, Power, and Jayson Blair at The New York Times
Season 15 Episode 18 - Aired 4/7/2014
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 and the entire world of journalism.
Director: N/A
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- 7.2/1012 votes
#19 - Let the Fire Burn
Season 15 Episode 19 - Aired 4/14/2014
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 radical urban group MOVE came to a tragic climax in 1985.
Director: N/A
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- 4.6/1011 votes
#20 - God Loves Uganda
Season 15 Episode 20 - Aired 5/5/2014
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 spread evangelical values to millions desperate for a better life.
Director: Roger Ross Williams
Writer: N/A
- NaN/100 votes
#21 - The New Black
Season 15 Episode 21 - Aired 6/16/2014
How African-American churches and gays deal with the rise of the gay-rights movement.
Director: N/A
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The Best Episodes of Independent Lens Season 15
Every episode of Independent Lens Season 15 ranked from best to worst. Discover the Best Episodes of Independent Lens Season 15!
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
Season 15 Ratings Summary
"The Graduates - The Girls" is the best rated episode of "Independent Lens" season 15. It scored N/A/10 based on 0 votes. Directed by N/A and written by N/A, it aired on 10/28/2013. This episode is rated NaN points higher than the second-best, "The Graduates - The Boys".