BFI's 100 American Independent Films

A detective fiction mixed with an essay-documentary about Los Angeles, Hollywood and the film industry, Angel City is a satiric comedy with serious intentions.

Men and women search for intimacy and meaning in their lives.

While investigating a young nun's rape, a corrupt New York City police detective, with a serious drug and gambling addiction, tries to change his ways and find forgiveness.

Dramatization of the Starkweather-Fugate killing spree of the 1950's, in which a teenage girl and her twenty-something boyfriend slaughtered her entire family and several others in the Dakota badlands.

Spike Jone’s debut feature film is a love story mix of comedy and fantasy. The story is about an unsuccessful puppeteer named Craig, who one day at work finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters it’s mad and controlling world of over overtaking another human body.

Ex-Green Beret hapkido expert saves wild horses from being slaughtered for dog food and helps protect a desert "freedom school" for runaways.

In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary...A year later their footage was found.

A rich but jealous man hires a private investigator to kill his cheating wife and her new man. But, when blood is involved, nothing is simple.

Eddie Addams wants to be an actor and becomes one. Although different than he aspired, he is discovered by a porn director. The movie shows the development of porn industry in the late 70's and 80's. Eddie's carrier is altered by the arrival of video.

In near-future New York, ten years after the “social-democratic war of liberation,” diverse groups of women organize a feminist uprising as equality remains unfulfilled.

Boys Don’t Cry is a multi-award winning drama about identity and love. The film tells the true story of Brandon Teena, a man who lives in a woman’s body who was at the age of 21 was raped and murdered.

Boyz N The Hood is the popular and successful film and social criticism from John Singleton about the conditions in South Central Los Angeles where teenagers are involved in gun fights and drug dealing on a daily basis.

A teenage loner pushes his way into the underworld of a high school crime ring to investigate the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend.

Billy is released after five years in prison. In the next moment, he kidnaps teenage student Layla and visits his parents with her, pretending she is his girlfriend and they will soon marry.

A mediocre musician goes on the road in search of the world's greatest guitar maker.

In Chain, actual malls, theme parks, hotels and corporate centers worldwide are joined into a monolithic superlandscape that shapes and circumscribes the lives of two women. One is a businesswoman researching the international theme park industry for her company. The other is a young drifter, illegally living and occasionally working in a shoppi...

Two cabbies search San Francisco's Chinatown for a mysterious character who has disappeared with their $4000. Their quest leads them on a humorous, if mundane, journey which illuminates the many problems experienced by Chinese-Americans trying to assimilate into contemporary American society.

Peter Winter is a young schizophrenic who is desperately trying to get his daughter back from her adoptive family. He attempts to function in a world that, for him, is filled with strange voices, electrical noise, disconcerting images, and jarringly sudden emotional shifts. During his quest, he runs afoul of the law and an ongoing murder investi...

Dante works in a local shop. He has to work on his day off, which he doesn't like. Just as he doens't like his customers. But hey? Why not close the shop and play hockey on the rooftop?

A cinematic portrait of the controversial comic book writer/artist and his traumatized family.

Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastion of these mores in America.

Al Roberts, a New York nightclub pianist, hitch-hikes to Hollywood to meet his girlfriend Sue. The gambler he's riding with, Charles, unexpectedly dies. Afraid the police wouldn't believe the truth, Al takes the man's identity. In a gas station, he gives a lift to Vera, a woman that knew Charles and blackmails Al with tragic consequences.

A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes, after narrowly escaping a bizarre accident.

Don’t Look Back is a documentary of Bob Dylan’s 1965 tour of England. The film begins with the famous and some say best music video of all times "Subterranean Homesick Blues.” The cameras follow Dylan as he experiments with the electric guitar for the first time.

Bob and his friends Dianne, Rick and Nadine have been drug addicts for years and live from one high to the next. Gus Van Sant attempts to show an intimate look into the lives of heroin addicts with his film Drugstore Cowboy.

Easy Rider is the classic cult film from the 1960’s. A road movie that embodies the feeling of being a hippie as two friends head cross-country to Mardi Grass. A controversial period film by Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda with some classic music from a generation of wanderers.

A prudish married couple feel put upon by the swingers living in their apartment building. One night, by accident, they discover a way to both rid themselves of the “perverts” down the hall and simultaneously realize their dream of opening a restaurant.

El Mariachi just wants to play his guitar and carry on the family tradition. Unfortunately, the town he tries to find work in has another visitor...a killer who carries his guns in a guitar case. The drug lord and his henchmen mistake El Mariachi for the killer, Azul, and chase him around town trying to kill him and get his guitar case.

Eraserhead is a confusing film from independent cult director David Lunch from 1977.

In the basement of a forest cabin a group of teenagers find a mysterious book and a tape recording. As they play the tape they hear an ancient spell and have unknowingly awaken an evil force. A low-budget blood bath, horror, splatter film that has since it’s release been hailed revolutionary and called a cult classic.

A B-Movie from Russ Meyer starring three slightly amusing big breasted GoGo girs that travel across the California desert and don’t look back to anyone or anything. A film from the soft porno king of big breasted bawds.

Nora, a single mother raising two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, waits tables at a truck-stop diner in a small New Mexico town. The beautiful and rebellious Trudi drops out of school and gets a job alongside Nora, while the younger Shade whittles away her time at Spanish movie matinees. Their lives are turned upside down when Trudi becomes ...

A group of children, in a depressed small town, band together to cover up a tragic mistake one summer.

Diana, without her father knowing it, trains as a boxer and achieves impressive success, blazing new trails for female boxers.

Max is a trendy, pretty, young lesbian, who is having trouble finding love. A friend sets her up with Ely, whom Max likes, but Ely is frumpy, homely, and older. Nor do they have much in common. Can Max learn to look past the packaging?

Solomon and Tummler are two teenagers killing time in Xenia, Ohio, a small town that has never recovered from the tornado that ravaged the community in the 1970s.

Despite his dedication to the junior-high students who fill his classroom, idealistic teacher Dan Dunne leads a secret life of addiction that the majority of his students will never know. But things change when a troubled student Drey makes a startling discovery of his secret life, causing a tenuous bond between the two that could either end dis...

Arriving in Chicago, Henry moves in with ex-con acquaintance Otis and starts schooling him in the ways of the serial killer.

This documentary follows two inner-city Chicago residents, Arthur Agee and William Gates, as they follow their dreams of becoming basketball superstars. Beginning at the start of their high school years, and ending almost 5 years later, as they start college, we watch the boys mature into men, still retaining their "Hoop Dreams".

Broke and alone on New Year's Eve, Wilson (Scoot McNairy) just wants to spend the rest of a very bad year in bed. But, when his best friend convinces him to post a personal ad, he meets a woman (Sara Simmonds) bent on finding the right guy to be with at midnight.

Two business executives--one an avowed misogynist, the other recently emotionally wounded by his love interest--set out to exact revenge on the female gender by seeking out the most innocent, uncorrupted girl they can find and ruining her life.

A dealer in "outsider" art travels from Chicago to North Carolina to meet her new in-laws, challenging the equilibrium of this middle class Southern home.

A young girl named Juno gets herself pregnant and tries to stand on her own. She soon learns a few lessons about being grown up.

A controversial portrayal of teens in New York City which exposes a world which is deeply disturbing. The film focuses on a freckled boy Telly, whose idea of safe sex is to have sex with only virgins. But one girl from one of his past unprotected passion test positive for HIV, and soon finds him making love yet to another unsuspecting girl

An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.

In a seedy New Jersey nightclub, gossip turns to murder when the owner Pete hires exotic dancer Danny Lee, who starts up an affair with barfly Ralph, much to the chagrin of his bedridden wife, Luane.

A devious femme fatale steals her husband’s drug money and hides out in a small town where she meets the perfect dupe for her next scheme.

Luke is a gay hustler. Jon is a movie critic. Both are HIV positive. They go on a hedonistic, dangerous journey. Their motto: "Fuck the world"

Low-budget independent filmmaker Nick Reve tries to keep everything together as his production is plagued with an insecure actress, a megalomaniac star, a pretentious beret-wearing director of photography, and lousy catering.

Five lonesome cowboys get all hot and bothered at home on the range after confronting Ramona Alvarez and her nurse.