Ballast
Lance Hammer’s first feature Ballast (2008), set in the Mississippi Delta, generated a great deal of critical buzz when it screened at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and Hammer wound up winning the Best Director award. Like the very best and most distinctive independent films being made today, Ballast represents a hard-sell in a glutted […]
The Pool
Maybe because two of Chris Smith’s earlier films have had the word "American" in their titles – American Job (1996) and American Movie (1999) – there seems to be something incongruous about the fact that his latest film, The Pool (2007), is an American independent film that takes place in Goa, India. If regionalism has been […]
Wendy and Lucy
Kelly Reichardt’s first feature River of Grass (1994), a regionally inflected, feminist riff on genre set in the area between Miami and the Everglades, drew critical attention within independent film circles, but received only limited theatrical distribution. It would be over ten years before Reichardt's collaboration with writer Jon Raymond provided the unexpected spark that reignited her […]
Afterschool
In attempting to explain why a group of high school teenagers in California covered up the murder of a classmate, screenwriter Neal Jimenez and director Tim Hunter’s River’s Edge (1987) blames the impact of media for the inability of the teens to feel any sort of emotion. Clarissa tells the protagonist Matt (Keanu Reeves) that […]
A Walk into the Sea
In 1966, Danny Williams, one of Andy Warhol’s former lovers and a significant force behind the psychedelic light shows of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, disappeared while visiting his family in New England. Following his early success as an editor for the Maysles brothers, Williams, a Harvard graduate, gravitated to the Factory in hopes of jump-starting […]
In the Company of Men
Neil LaBute’s disturbing black comedy, In the Company of Men (1997), was easily one of the most provocative and controversial films of the 1990s. A romantic office triangle involving two white collar workers and a deaf secretary, the film ended up winning the Filmmaker’s Trophy for Best Dramatic Feature at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, […]
The Exiles
Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles (1961) actually causes us to rethink the beginning of the modern independent film movement. The Exiles has been compared by critics to John Cassavetes’ debut feature Shadows (1957-59), but it seems even more related to Alfred Leslie and Robert Frank’s beat classic Pull My Daisy (1959), especially in terms of its […]
I, a Man
Andy Warhol’s first deliberate effort to make a commercial sexploitation film was I, a Man (1967–68 ), which was supposed to feature both Nico and Jim Morrison, but Morrison backed out at the last minute – possibly because Warhol wanted him to have sexual intercourse on-screen – and he was replaced by an actor friend […]