Filmmaker Byron Hurt, a life-long hip-hop fan, was watching rap music videos on BET when he realized that each video was nearly identical. Guys in fancy cars threw money at the camera while scantily clad women danced in the background. As he discovered how stereotypical rap videos had become, Hurt, a former college quarterback turned activist, decided to make a film about the gender politics of hip-hop, the music and the culture that he grew up with. “The more I grew and the more I learned about sexism and violence and homophobia, the more those lyrics became unacceptable to me,” he says. “And I began to become more conflicted about the music that I loved.” The result is HIP-HOP: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, a riveting documentary that tackles issues of masculinity, sexism, violence and homophobia in today’s hip-hop culture.

From a hilarious bit by comic Ahmed Ahmed on the joys of flying as an Arab American, to Danny Hoch's biting monologue about a harassed Bronx street vendor, to Hawaiian poet Haunani-Kay Trask's angry meditation on American imperialism, to Kate Rigg's “Rice Rice Baby,” a funny and explosive rap about the stereotyping of Asian women, RACE IS THE PLACE yanks off the muzzle of political correctness to speak the often ugly truths that lie beneath the rosy talk of "multiculturalism" and "diversity."

Like many 17-year-old girls, Shadya Zoabi enjoys listening to music and hanging out with her friends. But unlike most other girls, Shadya is also a world champion in karate, a feminist in a male-dominated culture and a Muslim Arab living in Israel. SHADYA tells her story over the course of two years, as she journeys from teenage girl to woman, from daughter to wife and from one family to another.

2 am Independent Lens: SISTERS OF '77

Twenty thousand people from across the U.S. gathered in Houston, Texas on a historic weekend in November 1977 for the first federally funded National Women's Conference, aiming to end discrimination against women and promote their equal rights. In the crowd were former first ladies Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson, current first lady Rosalyn Carter and women of all ages, ethnicities and political backgrounds. Filmmakers Cynthia Salzman Mondell and Allen Mondell combine footage of the conference with interviews—both then and now—with influential women’s leaders such as Barbara Jordan, Bella Abzug, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Eleanor Smeal, Ann Richards and Coretta Scott King, SISTERS OF '77 is a fascinating look at that pivotal weekend in 1977, an event that not only changed the lives of the women who attended, but the lives of Americans everywhere.

MAID IN AMERICA is an intimate, eye-opening look at the lives of las domésticas, as seen through the eyes of Eva, Telma and Judith: three Latina immigrants, each with a very different story, who work as nannies and housekeepers in Los Angeles, California. Filmmakers Anayansi Prado and Kevin Leadingham followed their subjects for several years, and their cameras caught some of the most intimate moments of these women’s lives, both on and off the job.

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.

2 am Independent Lens: KNOCKING

There are seven million Jehovah’s Witnesses in 230 countries worldwide. They spend 1.3 billion hours a year ministering door-to-door, making them one of America’s favorite punch lines. Despite their 130-plus-year history, this Christian group is still often derided and misunderstood. KNOCKING opens the door on Jehovah's Witnesses, revealing how they have impacted society in ways far greater and more surprising than the spreading of their faith.

Twenty-three years in the making, Jon Alpert's THE LAST COWBOY follows Vern Sager, a real American cowboy, through his hardscrabble life in one of the most isolated places in America. Out on the range with temperatures so extreme a herd can freeze overnight, Vern faces an army of adversaries: cattle rustlers, international agribusiness, old age, the weather and the wanderlust of his own family.

The Sager family owns a ranch in Porcupine, South Dakota, in the middle of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, located in Shannon County, the poorest county in America. Unemployment (around 80 percent), disease and lack of education produce a discouraging statistical profile. Shannon County, the historic and current site of "Cowboy versus Indian" tension, contains the sites of the Wounded Knee Massacre and the American Indian Movement occupation of Porcupine Butte, all just a horse ride from Vern Sager's home.

This autobiographical Peabody Award-winning film traces Paul Fierlinger’s tumultuous life from Stalinist Czechoslovakia to the U.S., as seen through his relationships with his dogs. Sustained by loyalty and caring for these animals—even in an atmosphere of oppression and suspicion—each dog serves as a marker of its master's personal growth, from a misanthrope to an artist who appreciates the divine powers of nature. (An audience favorite at previous Festivals.)

2 am Independent Lens: ENRON:

The Smartest Guys in the Room Who would think a documentary about the collapse of a mammoth corporation could play out like a drama with the emotional power of Greek tragedy? But that is the impact of ENRON: The Smartest Guys in the Room, the inside story of one of history’s greatest business scandals, in which top executives of America’s seventh largest company walked away with over one billion dollars while investors and employees lost everything.

Based on the best-selling book of the same name by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, and featuring insider accounts and incendiary corporate audio and videotapes, this tale of greed, hubris and betrayal reveals the outrageous personal excesses of the Enron hierarchy and the moral vacuum that led CEO Ken Lay—along with other players including accounting firm Arthur Andersen, Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Skilling and Chief Financial Officer Andy Fastow—to manipulate securities trading, bluff the balance sheets and deceive investors.

"Make art, not war" is Jimmy Mirikitani's motto. The 80-year-old artist was born in Sacramento, California, raised in Hiroshima, Japan, traveled the U.S. and even cooked for artist Jackson Pollock. But by 2001, Mirikitani was homeless, living on the streets of New York City. As tourists and shoppers hurried past, Mirikitani sat alone on a windy corner in New York’s SoHo, drawing pictures of whimsical cats, bleak internment camps and the angry red flames of the atomic bomb. When local filmmaker Linda Hattendorf stopped to ask about his art, a friendship—detailed in THE CATS OF MIRIKITANI—began that changed both their lives.