Irish Film Institute -AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS

AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS

This month’s selection of films offers a number of rare screenings, and some on 35mm, as these films would originally have been presented. Many of American cinema’s most admired contemporary directors’s debuts began their careers with films that have seldom received the attention given their other work. Alexander Payne, Noah Baumbach, and Kelly Reichardt are among those who fall into this category, with a general misperception that their careers began much later, and with greater immediate impact. Tom DiCillo’s superb comedy offers a withering depiction of the behind-the-scenes reality of the time, one in stark contrast to Robert Altman’s takedown of big-budget filmmaking in The Player (1992). After years in the wilderness, Altman was welcomed back to the fold by a generation who had grown up admiring his style, and produced a masterpiece in Short Cuts. One such student was Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Boogie Nights addresses a different genre of filmmaking while offering a fresh new take on Altman’s laissez-faire approach.

As the leftfield moved without compromise to the centre, the Oscar-winning success of the Coen Brothers, seminal independent auteurs, opened new doors for their peers, all of whom could offer something new to inquisitive audiences who had fallen for Marge Gunderson’s homespun charms. Those who followed in their wake, such as Todd Haynes, remain awards-season regulars, while the talent behind Swingers parlayed their small, low-budget effort into glittering, mega-budget, mega-salaried Hollywood careers.

Whether by accident or design, some of the era’s filmmakers have remained on the margins, defiantly so in the case of Harmony Korine, or with a natural air of world-weary resignation in the case of Todd Solondz, two singular artists whose work will perhaps forever hover on the edges of acceptance, their steadfast refusal to dilute their worldview for broader acceptance worthy of admiration.

See also IFI Talk by Dr Laura Canning, Falmouth University, on American independent cinema of the 1990s, and our IFI@Home offering! 

Season Notes by Kevin Coyne.

3 films for €30 bundles available from IFI Box Office, in-person or over the phone on 01 679 3477.

Programme

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