American
see all genres ›While often overshadowed internationally by the commercial behemoth that is Hollywood, U.S. independent, Canadian and Mexican filmmakers have claimed the medium as their own for just as long.
Discover American Films
Genres / International / Americas / North American / American
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145 W. 21
One of photographer/filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt's earliest 16mm films, 145 W. 21 plays very much like an amateur movie, albeit one featuring an especially notable cast (Burckhardt pals Paul Bowles, Aaron Copland, Edwin Denby and Virgil Thomson, among others). A romantic pair leaves their flat for a desultory burlesque show and...Start your free trial to watch -
1988: The Remake
1988: THE REMAKE, the second film of the trilogy, is about a huge audition for the remake of the classic American musical "Showboat." For three nights, July 22-24, 1975, hundreds of San Francisco’s most bizarre talent turned up, while actor Ed Nylund, a real-life librarian and musicologist, tried to enact...Start your free trial to watch
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Above Below
Cam Archer's hypnotic short film takes form as a letter into the void. A middle-aged woman reads a note to a lost friend while slowed home movies of an adolescent boy flash across the screen. With movements blurred and the picture flaring with light, the image seems to register the uncertain memory of one left behind. "Have...Start your free trial to watch -
Abraham Lincoln
Returning to the historic era of his greatest success, D.W. Griffith paid homage to the sixteenth President in this moving drama (his first talking picture) starring Walter Huston. Focusing on Abraham Lincoln’s personal tragedies as well as his great accomplishments, Griffith’s film depicts the American icon with a...Start your free trial to watch
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Absolutely Safe
Last year nearly 400,000 women in the United States got breast implants. At a time when more women than ever are making this choice, fewer voices than ever seem to be asking, "Why?" And fewer still are asking, "Are they safe?" ABSOLUTELY SAFE takes an open-minded, personal approach to the controversy over breast implant...Start your free trial to watch -
Acholiland
Northern Uganda, 1999. War has raged for thirteen years. Thousands are killed, millions are displaced and everyone is starving. Set in the heart of this turmoil, four UN workers must embark on a frantic food delivery to a mass of desperate villagers. But when the militia strike and the situation explodes, these men will face...Start your free trial to watch -
Acid Redux
When commissioned to make a Futurist-inspired film for the New York Biennial, George Kuchar responded in his characteristic way with this madcap vignette. Knocked out in a weekend (filmed Friday and edited Saturday), ACID REDUX was shot with his Electrographic Sinema class at the San Francisco Art Institute and features his...Start your free trial to watch
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The Acrobatic Fly
The challenge of the very slow lens required by F. Percy Smith for macro-photography, coupled with the insensitive film stock of the day, meant that so much light was required for exposure that the poor flies quickly succumbed to the heat. As Smith had glued their wings so that they could not fly away,...Start your free trial to watch
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Across the Border
ACROSS THE BORDER is a collage of found footage and documentary images, radio Spanish/English tracks and commentary by Philippe Bourgois, a Stanford Anthropologist trapped in an offensive by the United States-backed Salvadoran Military forces. The film’s position against U.S. intervention in the third...Start your free trial to watch -
Act of God
Is being hit by lightning a random natural occurrence or a predestined event? Accidents, chance, fate and the elusive quest to make sense out of tragedy underpin director Jennifer Baichwal’s captivating new work, an elegant cinematic meditation on the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning. To explore these...Start your free trial to watch
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The Actor's Children
The first Thanhouser release about the disappearance of an actor's children, their thrilling adventure and how they return to their parents. Remarkably for a movie studio’s first release, THE ACTOR'S CHILDREN is well up to the state of the art for early 1910. Intertitles announce, in a few words, what will...Start your free trial to watch -
Actors and Sin
Some of legendary writer Ben Hecht's best work comes to the screen in a two-in-one show business-themed comedy-drama that reveals what goes on when the greasepaint comes off. In ACTOR'S BLOOD, washed-up stage star Edward G. Robinson assembles all the suspects in the murder of his actress-daughter (Marsha Hunt). In WOMAN OF...Start your free trial to watch -
Adagio
Subtitled “Eros in Psyche” and set to a composition by Tomaso Albinoni, Lawrence Jordan’s rapturous live action short contemplates two nude figures in California idyll. They remain physically separated but Jordan’s spellbinding cutting and tactile camerawork suggest a loosening of inhibition. Parisian fountains and classical...Start your free trial to watch




