NPT is partnering with Watkins College of Art to host a new season of free Indie Lens Pop-Up documentary screenings. All six screenings will be held 6 to 8 p.m. Thursdays at Watkins College of Art (2298 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., Nashville TN 37228) and reservations are required. The first event of the new season takes place Oct. 12 and features John Scheinfeld’s Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary. Local film and music journalist Ron Wynn will moderate a panel discussion following the screening.
Selected from the 2017-2018 season of the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens, the films in NPT’s Indie Lens Pop-Up series include Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, an imagining of James Baldwin’s unfinished book, and Dolores, Peter Bratt’s profile of labor activist Dolores Huerta. Other films in the series cover the lives of artists and activists, industrial agriculture and historically black colleges and universities.
Indie Lens Pop-Up is a neighborhood series that brings people together for film screenings and community-driven conversations about what matters most, from newsworthy topics to family and relationships. NPT’s Indie Lens Pop-Up 2017-18.
Set against the social, political and cultural landscape of the times, Chasing Trane brings saxophone great John Coltrane to life, as a man and an artist. The film is the definitive look at the boundary-shattering musician whose influence continues to this day. Denzel Washington voices the words of Coltrane.
Chasing Trane features never-before-seen Coltrane family home movies, footage of Coltrane and his band in the studio (discovered in a California garage during production of this film), along with hundreds of never-before-seen photographs and rare television appearances from around the world. Coltrane’s incredible story is told by the musicians who worked with him (Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Reggie Workman), musicians inspired by his fearless artistry and creative vision (Common, John Densmore, Wynton Marsalis, Carlos Santana, Wayne Shorter, Kamasi Washington), Coltrane’s children and biographers, and well-known admirers such as President Bill Clinton and Dr. Cornel West.
Independent Lens is an Emmy Award-winning weekly series airing on Monday nights at 9 p.m. on NPT. The acclaimed series features documentaries united by the creative freedom, artistic achievement, and unflinching visions of independent filmmakers. Presented by Independent Television Service, the series is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people, with additional funding from PBS and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
