by Anne Marie “Independent cinema is cinema produced outside of big studios with a small to medium budget” – such is the definition of independent cinema. Contrary to many other definitions, independent cinema is defined not by what it is, but by its opposition to the cinema of big Hollywood machines. This is, in fact, how independent cinema was born. The birth of a new film label. It was in the United States, in the 50′s, that independent cinema fir...

The names Leslie and Willie a.k.a László Kovács and Vilmos Zsigmond must certainly ring a bell to anyone familiar with the world of cinema. On March 14, 2009, the American Film Institute hosted a special screening of “No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos”, a documentary by James Chressanthis about the lives and works of Kovács and Zsigmond. Vilmos Zsigmond and the late László Kovács are two of the most influential contemporary cinematographers considered to be instrumental in the d...

 Friday, July 27-------It did not seem like it at the time, but the films of a new generation of filmmakers in the 1970s truly did revolutionize the industry and save the studios from financial disaster. By the following decade, Hollywood was back to its old tricks of mounting blockbusters and lowest-common-denominator genre films. But for a period of about ten years (from 1967 to 1977, roughly defined by the release of Mike Nichol's THE GRADUATE and the unprecedented boxoffice extravaganza...

The Retrospective of the 54th Berlinale 2004 will be dedicated to a unique epoch in US film history: with “New Hollywood 1967 – 1976. Trouble in Wonderland”, the festival will bring a wonderful decade of cinematic art back to the screen. These films, made in the spirit of new tendencies, especially in politics, have in the meantime become classics. Eager to experiment, they departed remarkably from traditional narrative patterns.“The political and social upheavals of this era brought for...