American Independent

Based upon Dante's Inferno, 1/3 is a timeless fable of redemption, a gritty, streetwise contemporary thriller, and a poetic meditation on urban alienation.

Meet a group of people who share is a deep desire to have more meaning in their lives, a closer bond with their families and communities, and a connection to themselves and the natural world.

Alex Mar's lyrical first work is a bold and artful documentary that braids together the stories of three young Americans who have chosen to sacrifice comforts in order to embrace the fringes of alternative religion.

The winner of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival's Dramatic Directing Award and Excellence in Cinematography Award, Ballast is a stunning and evocative story of personal catastrophe and communal redemption set in the Mississippi Delta. Writer-director...

A uniquely delicate and moving road movie, Barking Water uses the ruggedly beautiful backdrop of rural Oklahoma to tell the story of a proud Native American attempting to reconnect with his estranged family.

Award winning film about two undocumented Mexican day-laborers in L.A. Each day they stand on the corner at the home improvement store seeking employment. Today, the job they are given is well paid compared to their poor usual wages. Today, one of...

In BEAR NATION, filmmaker Malcolm Ingram (Small Town Gay Bar), takes you on a fascinating journey inside a fast growing segment of the gay community where what was once a perceived negative is now redefining the definition of what it looks like to b...

This landmark 1967 faux-documentary finds recently dumped David Holzman (L. M. Kit Carson) unloading comic-neurotic monologues straight to the camera. Filmed like cinema verite, it’s a well-disguised fiction about the deceptions of cinematic...

Flirting with the conventions of blaxploitation and horror, Bill Gunn’s revolutionary independent film Ganja & Hess is a highly stylized and utterly original treatise on sex, religion, and African American identity.

Since the 1940’s, classroom films have aimed at tutoring young adolescents on subjects such as sexual development, the importance of fitting in, and juvenile delinquency, all in tidy, ten-minute sermons disguised as dramas. This collection ...

As the daughters of the baby-boom reached adolescence, American schools struggled to educate them on matters of sexual and social development. This fascinating collection contains films on wide-ranging topics as such as the reproductive system,...

When the three-man staff of a boutique ad firm trades their Brooklyn home base for a rural backwater campsite, a classic "city slickers in peril" scare-film set-up is reborn. But in I Can See You, Graham Reznick's "surprising horror debut" (Village...

Invitation to Dance is an eye-opening insider's account of disability in 21st century America. The film traces Simi Linton's personal growth as a disabled woman, and the larger historically significant developments around her over the past 40 years.

A deft, often chilling look at the unexploded dynamite of guard/prisoner relations, The Keeper is a searing psychological drama stunningly acted by Giancarlo Esposito (Do the Right Thing, Fresh, Malcolm X), African superstar Isaach De Bankole (Nigh...

LIBERTY KID captures with compassion and street-smart humor the spirit and pain of America transformed by 9-11. Two young friends struggle to survive after losing their jobs at the Statue of Liberty tourist site due to 9/11. Director Ulya Chaiken...

An erotic thriller from the director of Psychopathia Sexualis, THE LITTLE DEATH offers a peek into the seedy boudoirs of a Victorian-era brothel, where a strong-willed reformer ventures into a turn-of-the-century brothel to confront its owner, and t...

Widely regarded as one of the most influential and enjoyable films of the American independent cinema, Little Fugitive is an utterly charming fable that poetically captures the joys and wonders of childhood.

A powerfully intimate drama that captures the fears and desires of a young Japanese woman lost in America, LITTLEROCK is an affectingly authentic portrait of the bittersweet pain of young love and the cruel reality of cultural miscommunication,...

Chris Fuller's explosive debut centers around three teenagers trying to make sense of the brutal (and real-life) shooting of Tyron Lewis, a black motorist gunned down by a white policeman - as well as the widespread urban rioting that followed the...

On the heels of his Academy Award triumph, 2002 Best Actor Oscar winner Adrien Brody (The Pianist, The Thin Red Line) is electrifying as Jack, a dark hearted, smooth operating con-man with a poet's soul.

A wild throwback to '70s grindhouse movies, Modus Operandi is shockingly violent and even more entertaining. Director Frankie Latina took four years to direct this lovingly constructed ode to disreputable genre flicks, all of it shot in his hometow...

One of the most acclaimed films of this year's Sundance Film Festival, Azazel Jacobs' third feature is both a tribute to his parents (and to the lost New York of his childhood) and an acutely perceptive, deeply personal take on a universal...

With brush, ink, and rice paper, Zen painter Alok Hsu Kwang-han uses the play of light and dark to explore energy, creativity, and the art of life. On the verge of his 75th birthday, with a new love in his life, Alok employs his teachings to confron...

ON MEDITATION explores the deeply personal practice of meditation through an exploration of extraordinary people and their practices including David Lynch, Giancarlo Esposito, Russell Simmons, Congressman Tim Ryan, Peter Matthiessen, Mark Epstein an...

A monumental collection of historically vital films, digitally mastered in HD using archival elements. This collection of the works of America's legendary first African-American filmmakers is the only one of its kind with no fewer than a dozen...

Psychopathia Sexualis is a dreamlike depiction of turn-of-the-century sexual deviance, from the pages of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's notorious medical text. Director Approved R-Rated Version.

A dreamlike depiction of turn-of-the-century sexual deviance, from the pages of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's notorious medical text.

Using Purgatory as his filmic metaphor, Director Rodrigo Reyes creates a haunting exploration of transient life near the US/Mexico border.

Winner of the jury prize at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival, RHYTHM THIEF stars Jason Andrews (Last Exit to Brooklyn) as a NYC music bootlegger who finds himself in deep trouble after ripping off the music of an all-girl punk band (fronted by rocker...

A documentary portrait of Mexican musician Carmelo Muniz, who returns home to his young daughters after years playing the San Francisco taqueria circuit. Their reunion is bittersweet, as once Carmelo arrives in his hometown, he finds himself...