Hal Hartley is an American film director, screenwriter, producer and composer who became a key figure in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and '90s. His films include The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men, Amateur and Henry Fool, which are notable for deadpan humour and offbeat characters quoting philosophical dialogue.
Michelle Ingrid Williams is an American actress. Known primarily for starring in small-scale independent films with dark or tragic themes, she has received various accolades, including two Golden Globe Awards and a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for five Academy Awards and a Tony Award.
Jonathan Raymond, usually credited Jon Raymond, is an American writer living in Portland, Oregon. He is best known for writing the novels The Half-Life and Rain Dragon, and for writing the short stories and novels adapted for the films Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, and First Cow, all directed by Kelly Reichardt, with whom he co-wrote the screenplays.
Laurence T. Fessenden is an American actor, producer, writer, director, film editor, and cinematographer. He is the founder of the New York based independent production outfit Glass Eye Pix. His writer/director credits include No Telling, Habit (1997), Wendigo (2001), and The Last Winter, which is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. He has also directed the television feature Beneath (2013), an episode of the NBC TV series Fear Itself (2008) entitled "Skin and Bones", and a segment of the anthology horror-comedy film The ABCs of Death 2 (2014). He is the writer, with Graham Reznick, of the BAFTA Award-winning Sony PlayStation video game Until Dawn. He has acted in numerous films including Bringing Out the Dead (1999), Broken Flowers (2005), I Sell the Dead (2009), Jug Face (2012), We Are Still Here (2015), In a Valley of Violence (2016), Like Me (2017), and The Dead Don't Die (2019), Brooklyn 45 (2023), and Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Ira Sachs is an American filmmaker. Sachs started his career directing short films such as Vaudeville (1991) and Lady (1993) before making his feature film debut with The Delta (1997). Sachs later won acclaim for his dramatic independent films Forty Shades of Blue (2005), Keep the Lights On (2012), Love Is Strange (2014), Little Men (2016), and Passages (2023).
Indiewood films are made outside of the Hollywood studio system or traditional arthouse/independent filmmaking system yet managed to be produced, financed and distributed by the two with varying degrees of success and/or failure.
Kurt Voss is an American film director, screenwriter, and musician-songwriter. Voss's credits include Will Smith's debut Where The Day Takes You; the Justin Theroux, Alyssa Milano and Ice-T action film Below Utopia; actress Jaime Pressly's debut feature Poison Ivy: The New Seduction, and rock and roll related films including Down and Out with the Dolls and Ghost on The Highway: A Portrait of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club.
Zoe Swicord Kazan is an American actress and writer. She made her acting debut in the film Swordswallowers and Thin Men (2003) and later acted in films such as The Savages (2007), Revolutionary Road (2008), and It's Complicated (2009). She starred in Happythankyoumoreplease (2010), Meek's Cutoff (2010), Ruby Sparks (2012), What If (2013), The Big Sick (2017), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), and She Said (2022). She also wrote Ruby Sparks and co-wrote Wildlife (2018) with her partner Paul Dano.
Neil Kopp is an American film producer. His films include Old Joy (2006), Paranoid Park (2007), Green Room (2015), I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore (2017), and Showing Up (2022).
Wendy and Lucy is a 2008 American drama film directed by Kelly Reichardt. Reichardt and Jon Raymond adapted the screenplay from his short story Train Choir. The film stars Michelle Williams as Wendy, a homeless woman who searches for her lost dog, Lucy. It had its world premiere at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and was screened at several additional film festivals before receiving a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 10, 2008.
Kelly Reichardt is an American film director and screenwriter. She is known for her minimalist films closely associated with slow cinema, many of which deal with working-class characters in small, rural communities.
Meek's Cutoff is a 2010 American Western film directed by Kelly Reichardt. The film was shown in competition at the 67th Venice International Film Festival. The story is loosely based on a historical incident on the Oregon Trail in 1845, in which frontier guide Stephen Meek led a wagon train on an ill-fated journey through the Oregon desert along the route later known as the Meek Cutoff in the western United States. The film is formatted in the Academy ratio (1.37:1), a standard used in many classic Westerns.
Christopher Blauvelt is an American cinematographer, and a third generation film craftsman. Blauvelt started his career in the camera and electrical department under cinematographers Harris Savides, Christopher Doyle and Lance Acord. He continued to work with cinematographer and mentor Harris Savides until his sudden death from brain cancer. Blauvelt's continued work with Kelly Reichardt has garnered him an ICP Nomination in 2010 for his work on Meek's Cutoff and best cinematography at the Valladolid International Film Festival for Night Moves. Blauvelt shot Jeff Preiss' directorial debut Low Down for producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, which won the Dramatic Cinematography award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.
Certain Women is a 2016 American drama film edited, written, and directed by Kelly Reichardt. Based on "Native Sandstone", "Travis, B." and "Tome"—three short stories from Maile Meloy's collections Half in Love and Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It—it stars Laura Dern, Kristen Stewart, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, James Le Gros, and Jared Harris.
The 2016 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 21 to January 31, 2016. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 2, 2015. The opening night film was Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. The closing night film was Louis Black and Karen Bernstein's Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny.
The Fits is a 2015 American drama film directed by Anna Rose Holmer in her feature debut. The film tells the story of Toni, an 11-year-old tomboy who struggles to fit into a girls’ dance troupe, which begins to suffer from an inexplicable epidemic of violent fits.
Andrew Droz Palermo, ASC is an American cinematographer, director, and screenwriter. He is known for his work on The Green Knight (2021), A Ghost Story (2017), You're Next (2011), A Teacher (2013), and for directing Rich Hill (2014) and One & Two (2015).
Charm City Kings is a 2020 American drama film directed by Ángel Manuel Soto from a screenplay by Sherman Payne and a story by Chris Boyd, Kirk Sullivan, and Barry Jenkins. It is based on the 2013 documentary 12 O'Clock Boys by Lotfy Nathan. It stars Jahi Di'Allo Winston, Meek Mill, Will Catlett, and Teyonah Parris.
Showing Up is a 2022 American comedy-drama film co-written and directed by Kelly Reichardt, in her fourth collaboration with actress Michelle Williams. The film follows a sculptor managing the competing attentions of her art, job, family, and friendships.
Minimalist cinema is related to the art and philosophy of minimalism.
