George Butler’s documentary on bodybuilding culture of the 1970s did more to popularize the sport in the culture at large than anything before or since.
Kent Mackenzie’s 1961 independently produced drama, chronicles the lives of urban American Indians (all of them non-actors drawing from their own lives) in the Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles.
Todd Haynes draws from the songs, lives (real and imagined) and mysteries of Bob Dylan for his impressionistic survey of the artist, his art, his interaction (and at times collision) with the culture he both grabs onto and flees, and the mysteries that surround him.
The heat of war collides with the heat of desire in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s adaptation of “Manon Lescaut,” moved from 18th century Paris to Nazi-occupied France.
The always provocative Michael Haneke won the Palm d’or for his historical drama about the corruption under the nostalgic surface of a rural village in Germany before World War I.
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi plays himself in this road movie into rural Iran to find a young woman who posted a video pleading with filmmaker for help.
This comedy-drama about the reporters and staff of an independent weekly newspaper on the verge of selling out is one of the essential films of American independent cinema.
