Penny Lane (filmmaker)

Brian Frye introduced Lane to the Super 8 home movies confiscated by the FBI during the Watergate investigation.[21] The archival footage inspiring Lane and Frye became the basis of 2013 released nonfiction film Our Nixon, directed by Lane and co-produced by Frye.

The documentary depicts a unique portrait of Richard Nixon and his closest aides, chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, domestic affairs adviser John Ehrlichman, and special assistant Dwight Chapin. The film contains footage from 26 hours of Super 8 home movies filmed by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Chapin, as well as relevant news broadcasts and interviews.[22] Among numerous films about the Nixon and Watergate era, Our Nixon stands out for its distinct, intimate perspective and the stylized all archival editing choice.

Our Nixon had its world premiere at the 42nd International Film Festival in Rotterdam and its North American premiere at 2013 South by Southwest.[23] The film screened at multiple film festivals, including Ann Arbor Film Festival, where it won the Ken Burns Award for “Best of the Festival,”[24] and Seattle International Film Festival, where it won the Best Documentary Award.[25] Our Nixon was selected as the Closing Night Film at 42nd New Directors/New Films.[26] On August 1, 2013, CNN broadcast the film, and Cinedigm handled the film's theatrical release.[27]

The Wall Street Journal wrote that the "highly personal view of the Nixon years is, for obvious reasons, a sad and wrenching one - a film that is nonetheless filled with spirit, humor, and a bountiful sense of irony.”[28] Amy Entelis, senior vice president for development for CNN Worldwide, praised the film for its “original material” and “unconventional” storytelling.[29]

After encountering Charlatan, an authorized biography written by Pope Brock, in her local public library in 2009, Lane developed an interest in John Romulus Brinkley, a doctor who attempted to cure impotence via goat testicle transplantation in 1917.[30][31] The experimental documentary Nuts! mainly consists of animated reenactments and narration voiced by both actors and Brinkley himself.[32] “Brinkley’s story is not presented as the object of a neutral nonfiction gaze, but the opportunity for viewers to actively wrestle with the ethical and epistemological issues central to the narrative nonfiction form,” Lane wrote in the home page of NUTS!

Nuts! premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on Jan. 22, 2016, and won the Special Jury Award for Editing in the U.S. Documentary Competition of the festival. The documentary premiered theatrically on June 22, 2016, at Film Forum in New York.[33]

Rolling Stone named Nuts! one of the 12 best movies they saw at Sundance 2016, saying “the fact that it’s all true didn’t stop Lane’s film from ending with the best twist of this year’s fest.”[34]

Lane's third feature-length documentary The Pain of Others (2018), an all-archival documentary about the controversial illness known as Morgellons, world premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam and was later screened at BAMcinemaFest,[35] Maryland Film Festival[36] and Sheffield Doc/Fest.[37]  The film is composed entirely of YouTube vlogs and does not answer the scientific question of the physiological causes of Morgellons—rather, it focuses on need for human proximity and unexplained suffering of the vloggers, as well as the specific formal and emotional qualities of 2010s era YouTube.[38][39] Lane has described the film as both "YouTube body horror,"[40] and a "work of media archeology" which asks the questions, "When doctors send you away, to whom do you turn for help? When suffering has no explanation, what rushes to fill the void? How does false information spread on the internet? If a supportive and loving community forms around a shared delusion, can that be a good thing? What do you do in the face of someone else’s pain if you believe the pain stems from a delusion?"[41] Lane was inspired to make the film by reading a 2013 essay in Harpers Magazine by Leslie Jamison describing the phenomenon.[42]

An examination of the origins of The Satanic Temple and their brand of grassroots activism.[43] The documentary premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival[44] and is distributed by Magnolia Pictures.[45] Lane described the editing for the film occurred in approximately six months, "concurrent with the bulk of shooting."[46]

Lane’s film on the musician Kenny G was released on HBO, as part of the ‘Music Box’ strand, and in theaters on December 2, 2021, and was one of Glenn Kenny’s Critic’s Picks in his December 2 review in the New York Times.[47]

The Abortion Diaries is a short documentary film released in 2005 which Lane completed as her MFA thesis project at iEAR Studios, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's electronic arts graduate program. The 30-minute documentary was made for approximately $3,000 and directed and edited by Lane. It features intimate interviews with 12 women who speak candidly about their experiences with abortion. Critics have written of the film, "[t]hough the concept is simple, it is also profoundly radical"[48] and described it as "clear-eyed and surprisingly compelling".[49]

Part of Lane's research process was to research the history of abortion stories in American popular media (film and television) and share it publicly on a widely consulted timeline.[50][51]

Lane said she made the film to address a "generational gap in language" around abortion[52] after having an abortion in her early 20s which she found "horrifically isolating" and feeling that her experiences were not represented in the popular media.[53] "I felt guilty for not feeling guilty . . . I expected I would suffer a lot. Because I didn't, I felt like a monster." Lane looked "literally all over the Internet" for advice to help her handle her emotions, but found mainly pro-life literature disguised as unbiased pregnancy resources and pro-choice websites that failed to offer much beyond statistics. She made this film to correct the lack of representation and to "approach a divisive issue and go beyond bumper stickers."[54][55]

The Abortion Diaries was a DIY film primarily self-distributed by the director herself. It became important organizing and discussion tool, screening at hundreds of colleges, churches, community centers, basements, and bars in every US state.[56][57] It won several awards, including an Audience Award at New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival, Best Student Documentary at Carolina Film/Video Festival, and Choice USA's “Spirit of Communication” Award.

The Voyagers is an experimental documentary that tells the story of the NASA project to launch two spacecraft, each carrying golden phonograph records holding a wealth of human culture, into space in 1977. Space probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 pioneered research of the far reaches of the Solar System and continue to hurtle further into outer space today. In the process of putting together these time capsules of human experience, Carl Sagan and the project's creative director, Ann Druyan, fell in love. Their story resonated with Lane, who created a personal take on it for her own wedding, as a meditation on the nature of love in an uncertain universe.[58][59]

Lane said the film is "a valentine to Carl Sagan and the way that he ... embodies the place where scientific skepticism meets child-like awe and wonder and joy and optimism."[60] Brainpickings founder Maria Popova described the film as "a living testament to the creative capacity of remix culture"[61] and critic Collin Souter described it as "a beautiful film, one that never resorts to over-the-top sentiment to make a point about love and the cosmos."[62] Critic Andrew S. Allen described the film as "a profound story about love and the fearless ability of the human spirit to stand in awe of its vastness, to dream of its mysteries, and to catch a glimpse of its incomprehensible complexity, and, knowing what triumphs and heartache lie ahead, still boldly jump in headfirst."[60]

The Voyagers won many awards, including Best Essay Film (2012 Short of the Week), Best Film (FLEX Film Festival 2011), Winner of the Hammer to Nail Short Film Contest (July 2012). Honorable Mention, Disposable Film Festival (March 2012), Honorable Mention, AFI FEST, Los Angeles (November 2011) and Best Experimental Film, New Orleans Film Festival, NOLA (October 2011).[63]