Introduction to Modern American Cinema

From New Hollywood to Independent Cinema. A seminar with film critic Giannis Kantea-Papadopoulos on the filmmakers, movements, and films that transformed the American cinematic landscape.

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).