Filmmaker Jem Cohen (Photo: STV)

There are "independent" filmmakers, and then there are independent filmmakers. The genuine article is his own crew, editor and often his own producer.

Take Brooklyn filmmaker Jem Cohen, whose 20-year career features an uncompromising blend of narrative work, experimental shorts and acclaimed music films with the likes of R.E.M., Fugazi and Vic Chesnutt. His latest short project, NYC Weights and Measures, premiered June 17 on PBS' Reel NY.

The film provides atmospheric glimpses of the city's geography and population as filmed by Cohen over the years. "It’s a great place to shoot," Cohen said during a recent shooting expedition beneath the Manhattan Bridge. "But it's kind of endlessly heartbreaking that it keeps getting more and more homogenous, and is less and less itself."

Cohen says he has also experienced increasing police crackdowns while filming on city streets. He has been accosted numerous times around New York, and had his film seized in January while traveling via Amtrak to Washington, D.C. (For more about Cohen's efforts to reclaim the footage, visit indieWIRE's companion blog, The Reeler).

Nevertheless, the filmmaker remains an undeterred one-man show. "All the politics and shenanigans of the film industry, I've seen it up close," he says. "I even worked in it for ten years. I did my time. This kind of work--shooting on my own on the street--it isn't about business, and it'll always be more my thing."