All eyes and attention remain firmly fixed on American cinema for good reason: it has been instrumental in shaping a shared narrative language and a broader film culture, while also serving as the source of every new pop-culture phenomenon. But how did the cinematic grammar that remains a point of reference for so many generations of viewers come into being?
The sessions in the lecture series “Introduction to Modern American Cinema” explore in depth the filmmakers and movements that shaped American cinema from the 1970s onward. This was the era when New Hollywood (Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas) emerged, alongside the bold visions of pioneering female directors (Elaine May, Barbara Kopple, Martha Coolidge, Barbara Loden) and a radical underground scene (John Waters, Barbara Hammer, Charles Burnett).
The lectures also explore the flourishing of American independent cinema (Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh), as well as the rise of a postmodern approach to filmmaking, through films such as “The Player” (Robert Altman) and “Pulp Fiction” (Quentin Tarantino), alongside the mythology of “Twin Peaks” (David Lynch).
1/10: New Hollywood
The great transformation of American cinema: new directors, antiheroes and stories that move away from the conventions of classical Hollywood. A period of creative freedom, political questioning and bold cinematic experimentation.
8/10: Radical Women Directors
Women filmmakers who claimed space behind the camera and reshaped the way American cinema looks at gender, the body, desire and society.
15/10: Cinema “from Below”
Stories emerging from outside the centre of the American film industry: marginalised voices, communities that had long remained unseen, and films that make room for different experiences and realities.
22/10: Independent Cinema
When films break away from the machinery of the major studios: new filmmakers, smaller budgets and greater freedom in subject matter, form and cinematic language.
29/10: Postmodernism or “Cinema Gone All the Way”
When cinema starts playing with its own rules: references, irony, parody and genre-mixing! A cinema that pushes the possibilities of form and narrative to the limit.
The 1st Series of Meetings takes place at the Hellenic American Union Theatre, 22 Massalias Street, every Thursday, 19:00-21:00.
The fee covers the entire series of lectures; it is not possible to attend individual lectures separately.
Athenian since 1994. He studied Political Science at Panteion University and spent nearly nine years writing about cinema for Athinorama. When he’s not alternating between watching Panathinaikos ...
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