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The New American Cinema
- Abstract
The intention of the makers of this film was to create a situation whereby one might comply with James Agee’s tender request: “The films I most eagerly look forward to will not be documentaries but works of pure fiction, played against and into, and in collaboration with unrehearsed and uninvented reality.”
-Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, makers of Pull My Daisy, a movie.
THERE IS AN independent film Movement in the United States today, and it goes by the name of the “New American Cinema.” The title is the invention of the movement’s prime publicist, Jonas Mekas, a movie critic, the editor of his own occasional journal (Film Culture), and himself one of the new film makers. The movies his designation refers to are a growing number of important and exciting documentaries, shorts, and features being made outside the aesthetic and monetary confines of Hollywood. The “New American Cinema,” in essence, is something in the way of a spontaneous cultural phenomenon.
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