American Independent

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...  More

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...  More

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...  More

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...  More

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 th...  More

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 a...  More

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...  More

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...  More

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...  More

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...  More

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,...  More

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...  More

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 onl...  More

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...  More

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.  More

A mesmerizing indie Southern Gothic tale loaded with suspense and lush visuals. Four aimless teenagers skateboard in the park and rummage through the abandoned bones of an empty trailer park,...  More

Authentic, suspenseful, funny, and alive with surprising detail, Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker's Take Out "takes no false step as a scrupulous and socially conscious slice of life" (Nathan Lee, The...  More

Songs My Brothers Taught Me is set in the often starkly beautiful Badlands of South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation; most of the key players are young Lakota Native Americans.  More

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...  More

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

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,...  More

A lost gem from the 1990's independent film boom, THE SEARCH FOR ONE-EYE JIMMY is a lovably offbeat comedy that stars a who's who of indie acting talents. Steve Buscemi, Samuel L. Jackson, John...  More

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...  More

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.  More

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.  More

A perfect storm is brewing as agriculture pioneer Cary Fowler races against time to protect the future of our food. Gene banks of the world are crumbling, crop failures are producing starvation...  More

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...  More

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,...  More

Writer-director-animator Emily Hubley's feature length debut is a "highly emotional fable" (New York Observer) that imaginatively fuses live action and animation. A woman visits her abandoned...  More

Ti West's Trigger Man leads the charge in a new wave of stripped down, scary movies fueled by seat-of-the-pants filmmaking ingenuity.  More