HAA 1806 American Independent Film

(usually offered once a year)

Since the 1920s, film production in the United States has been dominated by a powerful industry, manifested for several decades by a Hollywood "studio system" and subsequently by networks of economic corporate alliances. This course examines a wide variety of films that have been made using independent financing, outside the confines of this industry. The "indies" from Miramax and other studios will not be included. The films to be considered will be primarily a diverse sampling of independently produced narrative films, although a few examples of non-narrative experimental works (by, for instance, Maya Deren, Bruce Conner, Stan Brakhage, and Andy Warhol) and documentaries will be included as well. The course is structured more or less chronologically, beginning with a ca. 1920 classic by the African-American filmmaking pioneer Oscar Michaux. Attention will be given to late 1950s "Beat Generation" films like Pull My Daisy and John Cassavetese' first film, Shadows. Low-budget pioneers such as Roger Corman, Doris Wishman, Russ Meyer, John Waters and others will be considered, as will 1960s classics like Easy Rider and Medium Cool. Also included are key examples of blaxploitation and horror films from the late 1960s and the 1970s, including work by George Romero. Ethnic films such as Joan Micklin Silver's Hester Street (1975) and Wayne Wanga's Chan Is Missing (1982) will also be examined, and the course will conclude with several key directors who emerged from the late 1970s to the late 1980s, such as John Sayles, David Lynch, Susan Seidelman, Jim Jarmusch, and Steven Soderbergh.