American Independents
22 Episodes
Get outside the mainstream and sample these idiosyncratic visions from the wide world of indie filmmaking.
-
1:35:39Episode 1
Blood Simple
Episode 1
Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen • 1984 • United States
Joel and Ethan Coen's career-long darkly comic road trip through misfit America began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner releases a torrent of violence with one murderous though...
-
1:27:07Episode 2
The Daytrippers
Episode 2
Directed by Greg Mottola • 1996 • United States
Starring Parker Posey, Hope Davis, Liev SchreiberWith its droll humor and bittersweet emotional heft, the feature debut of writer-director Greg Mottola announced the arrival of an unassumingly sharp-witted new talent on the 1990s indie film scene....
-
2:08:18Episode 3
Night on Earth
Episode 3
Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1991 • France, United Kingdom, Germany, United States, Japan
Starring Gena Rowlands, Winona Ryder, Rosie PerezFive cities. Five taxicabs. A multitude of strangers in the night. Jim Jarmusch assembled an extraordinary international cast of actors (including Gena Rowlan...
-
1:56:08Episode 4
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Episode 4
Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1999 • United States
Starring Forest Whitaker, John Tormey, Cliff GormanJim Jarmusch combined his love for the ice-cool crime dramas of Jean-Pierre Melville and Seijun Suzuki with the philosophical dimensions of samurai mythology for an eccentrically postmodern take o...
-
1:29:26Episode 5
Stranger Than Paradise
Episode 5
Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1984 • United States, Germany
Starring John Lurie, Richard Edson, Eszter BalintWith this breakout film, Jim Jarmusch established himself as one of the most exciting voices in the burgeoning independent-film scene, a road-movie poet with an affinity for Americana at it...
-
1:26:03Episode 6
Frances Ha
Episode 6
Directed by Noah Baumbach • 2013 • United States
Starring Greta Gerwig, Mickey SumnerGreta Gerwig is radiant as Frances, a woman in her late twenties in contemporary New York trying to sort out her ambitions, her finances, and, above all, her intimate but shifting bond with her best friend, Sop...
-
Slacker
Episode 7
Directed by Richard Linklater • 1991 • United States
Starring Richard Linklater, Kathy McCarty, Rudy BasquezSLACKER, directed by Richard Linklater, presents a day in the life of a loose-knit Austin, Texas, subculture populated by eccentric and overeducated young people. Shooting on 16 mm for a ...
-
1:38:39Episode 8
Metropolitan
Episode 8
Directed by Whit Stillman • 1990 • United States
Starring Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Taylor NicholsOne of the great American independent films of the 1990s, the surprise hit METROPOLITAN, by writer-director Whit Stillman, is a sparkling comedic chronicle of a young man’s romantic misadven...
-
1:31:40Episode 9
Desert Hearts
Episode 9
Directed by Donna Deitch • 1985 • United States
Donna Deitch's swooning and sensual first narrative feature, DESERT HEARTS, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, by a woman. In this 1959-set film, adapted...
-
Dead Man
Episode 10
Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1995 • United States
With DEAD MAN, his first period piece, Jim Jarmusch imagined the nineteenth-century American West as an existential wasteland, delivering a surreal reckoning with the ravages of industrialization, the country's legacy of violence and prejudice, a...
-
1:17:28Episode 11
Paris Is Burning
Episode 11
Directed by Jennie Livingston • 1990 • United States
Starring Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Angie XtravaganzaWhere does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African America...
-
1:25:55Episode 12
Losing Ground
Episode 12
Directed by Kathleen Collins • 1982 • United States
Starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane JonesOne of the first feature films directed by an African American woman, Kathleen Collins’s LOSING GROUND tells the story of a marriage between two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives...
-
Old Joy
Episode 13
Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2006 • United States
Starring Daniel London, Will OldhamTwo old friends reunite for a quietly revelatory overnight camping trip in this breakout feature from Kelly Reichardt, a microbudget study of character and masculinity that introduced many viewers to one of co...
-
1:31:35Episode 14
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Episode 14
Directed by Miranda July • 2005 • United States
Starring John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles ThompsonWith this compassionate, startling comedy that could have come from no other artistic sensibility, the brilliant Miranda July reveals a world both familiar and strange—an original vision of creativ...
-
1:47:34Episode 15
Certain Women
Episode 15
Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2016 • United States
Starring Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle WilliamsThe expanses of the American West take center stage in this intimately observed triptych from Kelly Reichardt. Adapted from three short stories by Maile Meloy and unfolding in self-containe...
-
1:30:36Episode 16
Secret Honor
Episode 16
Directed by Robert Altman • 1984 • United States
Starring Philip Baker HallSequestered in his home, a disgraced President Richard Milhous Nixon arms himself with a bottle of scotch and a gun to record memoirs that no one will hear. He is surrounded by the silent portraits of Lincoln, Eisenhower...
-
1:38:02Episode 17
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Episode 17
Directed by Melvin Van Peebles • 1971 • United States
Starring Melvin Van Peebles, Simon Chuckster, Hubert ScalesA landmark of Black and American independent cinema that would send shock waves through the culture, SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG was Melvin Van Peebles’s second feature film, a...
-
1:17:58Episode 18
Mala Noche
Episode 18
Directed by Gus Van Sant • 1985 • United States
Starring Tim Streeter, Doug Cooeyate, Ray MongeWith its low budget and lush black-and-white imagery, Gus Van Sant’s debut feature MALA NOCHE heralded an idiosyncratic, provocative new voice in American independent film. Set in Van Sant’s hometown ...
-
1:30:14Episode 19
George Washington
Episode 19
Directed by David Gordon Green • 2000 • United States
Starring Candace Evanofski, Donald Holden, Damien Jewan LeeOver the course of one hot summer, a group of children in the decaying rural South must confront a tangle of difficult choices. An ambitiously constructed, elegantly photographed med...
-
1:25:43Episode 20
Bless Their Little Hearts
Episode 20
Directed by Billy Woodberry • 1984 • United States
Starring Nate Hardman, Kaycee Moore, Angela BurnettScripted and shot by Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry’s slice-of-life revelation is a key masterpiece of the LA Rebellion, the black independent-cinema renaissance that emerged from UCLA’s film...
-
1:35:02Episode 21
Chameleon Street
Episode 21
Directed by Wendell B. Harris Jr. • 1989 • United States
Starring Wendell B. Harris Jr., Angela Leslie, Amina FakirWinner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 1990 Sundance Film Festival—yet criminally underseen for over three decades—CHAMELEON STREET recounts the improbable but true story of Michiga...
-
1:19:13Episode 22
Clean, Shaven
Episode 22
Directed by Lodge Kerrigan • 1994 • United States
Starring Peter Greene, Robert Albert, Megan OwenLodge Kerrigan began his succession of utterly unique, visually and aurally dazzling character studies with the raw, ravaging CLEAN, SHAVEN. A compelling headfirst dive into the mindscape of a schi...