My American Independent Film teacher just emailed us our syllabus for the semester. On the front page it says “Should probably be called New American Cinema.”
Oh. Now you tell me.
Not that I’m not excited to learn about New American Cinema, which is a rather big hole in my movie-watching habits, but it definitely the likelihood of my predictions by a mile.
The three that I got right: Stranger Than Paradise (1983); Synedoche, New York (2008); The Future (2011)
And as a brief means of defending my dignity, I did get a lot of auteurs right. We are going to be watching plenty of Cassavetes, a Spike Lee, a Steven Soderbergh, some Gus Van Sant.
The thing is, New American Cinema is different from American Independent if only that the former inspired the latter. We’re watching a lot more Altman, Scorsese, and Coppola than I would have expected, but really I should have seen at least two Malick films.
Anyway, I’m not gonna bother listing out the syllabus, but hopefully there will be some posts forthcoming under the “Movie Class Film” tab.
Classic Cante move.
Yeah I know. We should work out a Netflix viewing schedule together or something.
that is a total copout. im not sure scorsese and coppola are deserving of being on there, they’re so completely covered by every other film studies class ever i’m sure.
That’s how I feel too. I haven’t seen all of their oeuvre, of course, but it would have been cool to watch more lesser-known films.
I haven’t looked recently but when I tried finding films from alison anders et al I struggled to even find vhs let alone dvd. That might be one reason for the gaps in the syllabus. But no excuse!
It just seems weird to leave those out when we have a pretty decent library of films to choose from on campus. Even if it’s a question of availability, there are still some films by independent auteurs that are on DVD.
What a disappointing result. New American Cinema strikes me as an easy class; American Independent Cinema, if it actually covered indie films and not just Sundance hits and the like, is something that even critics don’t seem to understand and would be a great topic. Can’t wait to read your reviews, though!
I’m looking forward to it still, but yeah I would have preferred American Independent. It’s just that most film classes end up covering New American Cinema in the second half anyway. Let’s hope writer’s block doesn’t hit me for these; I’ve got quite a lot to watch.
Oh dear sorry it isn’t quite what you expected Allison! I’m sure you’ll still see lots of good movies though and if anything you’ll get interesting conversation in class.
All true, and I am looking forward to it none the less.