100 American Independent Films Review

• 15th Feb 2012

Author: Jason Wood

It’s amazing how many big names started off as independent artists. You will find many of them in this book – but staying true to the world of independent cinema, the book doesn’t linger on this too heavily – instead staying true to its name and focussing on the overall feel for American Independent cinema. The true golden age of this was perhaps the late 60’s and 70’s.

Names like Bogdanovich, Waters, Altman and Sayles were making their names in the underground of cinema whilst those other independent film-makers (Coppola, Speilberg, Lucas, DePalma and Scorsese) were hitting it big.

Independent films got another shot in the arm in the 90s when the new wave of writer/directors came along and started to take the awards by storm. Solondz, Aranofsky, Haynes, Tarantino, DiCillo, Araki and La Bute were all making names for themselves with challenging, fresh and often disturbing ideas. But it presents the country and the world with a less polished view of the world around them and helped aspiring film-makers realise their own cinematic dreams. It also offered audiences a wider scope for what is possible.

This is a great handbook for a specific genre that is still strong to this day. If you have even a fleeting interest in American Independent Cinema then this will help you widen that interest as there are many films beyond even this book worth getting your teeth into. This book at the very least introduces you to many of the key names involved in what is consistently a movement for film-making.

Steven Hurst