Independent
see all genres ›The whole notion of independence applies to films made outside major studios though, occasionally, the studios will distribute independently-produced films that they acquire at assorted film festivals. Independent films are often characterized as personal projects with low budgets and limited releases. Because of this, they usually feature a high degree of artistic investment and frequently explore unconventional subject material.
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Genres / Independent
SUB-GENRES · Documentary · Narrative
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Debra Paget, For Example
Debra Paget was a contract player for 20th-Century Fox, whom they groomed and coached for stardom. But she never quite caught on. Maybe the movies weren't interesting enough. Or maybe she didn’t stand out from the rest of the pack. Or the studio didn’t take enough care in...Watch Movie
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The Cult of JT LeRoy
Ethically charged, controversial and confusing, JT's life and death sprang open a Pandora's box of powerful questions about literature and culture, identity and celebrity and the reality of the society we live in. Fraud? Art? Sociopathy? Complicity? THE CULT OF JT LEROY is a...Watch Movie
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River of Grass
Kelly Reichardt's darkly funny debut feature, RIVER OF GRASS brought the writer/director back to the setting of her adolescence, the suburban landscape of southern Florida, where she grew up with her detective father and narcotics agent mother. Shot on 16mm, the story follows the misadventures of...Watch Movie
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A Shock to the System
A middle-aged advertising executive loses his long-awaited promotion to a younger man. In frustration, he accidentally pushes a panhandler in front of a subway train... and gets away with the death. Realizing that committing murder might be a little easier than he previously...Watch Movie
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Heavy Metal Parking Lot
Hailed by Cameron Crowe as "one of the greatest rock movies ever made," HEAVY METAL PARKING LOT documents the parking lot tailgating at Capital Centre in Largo, Maryland, in the hours before (and the moments after) a Judas Priest concert in May 31, 1986 (the "JUN 23 1995"...Watch Movie
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Becoming Anita Ekberg
BECOMING ANITA EKBERG is an exploration of how the construct of "Anita Ekberg" became an internationally famous sex goddess as a result of the careful cultivation of her image in various movies, both in Hollywood, by Frank Tashlin, and in Europe, by Federico Fellini. It's an...Watch Movie
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Christmas, Again
For a fifth consecutive December, a heartbroken Noel returns to New York City to work the night shift at a sidewalk Christmas tree lot. Devoid of any holiday spirit, he struggles to stay awake during the long, chilly nights in his trailer, while the daytime traffic keeps him...Watch Movie
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Trust
The second feature film from writer/director Hal Hartley is TRUST. It concerns the unusual romance between two young misfits wandering the same suburban town. When Maria, a recent high school dropout, announces her unplanned pregnancy to her family, her father dies of a heart attack, her mother...Watch Movie
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Sex and Broadcasting
SEX AND BROADCASTING is a human and humorous look at New Jersey's WFMU, a radio station that refuses any programming boundaries. Most of its disc jockeys are unpaid volunteers, working for their love of surprising, spontaneous radio. They play everything from flat-out...Watch Movie
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Natural Selection
Winner of the Grand Jury and Audience Awards at SXSW and nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards, including Best Actress for Rachael Harris, NATURAL SELECTION is a wonderfully irreverent comedy about a devoted Texas housewife whose carefully ordered world is turned upside...Watch Movie
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Our Stars
Stars of the 1940s and 1950s, were they cast for their mutual affinities or for their commercial appeal? If and when they were re-starred years later, did the magic still work? Did sparks still fly? The movie business, a machine that manufactured romance and desire at the same time that it...Watch Movie
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Dark Star
In the mid twenty-first century, mankind has reached a point in its technological advances to enable colonization of the far reaches of the universe. DARK STAR is a futuristic scout ship traveling far in advance of colony ships. Armed with Exponential Thermosteller Bombs, it prowls the darkest...Watch Movie
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The Unbelievable Truth
A comedy of errors surrounding a beautiful college bound girl disturbingly preoccupied with the threat of nuclear destruction in THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH. Nevertheless, she falls in love with a handsome ex-con who is rumored to have murdered, many years before, the father of his...Watch Movie
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Wendy and Lucy
Named to over sixty "Best of 2008" lists (and even many "Best of the Decade" lists), WENDY AND LUCY solidified filmmaker Kelly Reichardt's reputation for films that are (according to the New York Times) "a touchstone of the new realism in American cinema." Drifting upwards to Alaska like a 21st...Watch Movie
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Teknolust
Academy Award® winner Tilda Swinton plays four roles in this award-winning science fiction film about Rosetta Stone and her three Self-Replicating Automatons which she clones from her own DNA. Though they look human, the SRA cyborgs were bred as intelligent machines and are immortal. In order to...Watch Movie
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The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk
A video essay exploring the frequency and meaning of that particular prop in a wide variety of Sirk movies. Is it a device that traps and keeps women in an artificial world with a limited point of view? Or is it a gateway to the past and the future, and a distorted but...Watch Movie
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Blank Generation
A classic punk rock movie from 1980 starring Richard Hell, illustrating the end of the first wave of New York City punk rock better than any documentary. Nada (Carole Bouquet), a beautiful French journalist on assignment in New York, records the life and work of an up and...Watch Movie
