READINGS:
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Please print the readings and bring them to class with you next week
Peter Biskind, "Introduction: The Story Till Now" from Down and Dirty Pictures: Sundance, Miramax, and the Rise of Independent Film.
Chuck Kleinhans, "Independent Features: Hopes and Dreams" from The New American Cinema, ed. Jon Lewis.
John Pierson, "Stranger Than Paradise and The First Golden Age, and "Dialogue: Paradise" (with Kevin Smith) from Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dikes: A Guided Tour Across a Decade of American Independent Cinema.
QUESTIONS :
Enter your responses in the comments section by clicking on the "comments" link below. Refer to the course syllabus for a list of the required components.
Professor's words of wisdom: be sure to answer all of the questions within questions...
- Yesterday in class we started our discussion of some of the ways in which we might distinguish an independent film from a Hollywood film. What two qualities/characteristics of Stranger Than Paradise stood out to you most as being representative of an independent sensibility? How would this film be different if it was made in a Hollywood context?
- All three of the assigned readings discuss the history of the American independent cinema but from different vantage points and perspectives. What are their different "takes" on the period? Do they all seem to agree on the significance of the independent cinema movement and the "key movers and shakers" within it? If not, how do their accounts differ?
