The course comprises one unit of a four-semester survey (each part of which is free-standing and may be taken separately and independently of each other and in any order, with no prerequisites) of the major achievements of the most important artistic movement of the last sixty years in American film--the independent feature filmmaking movement, in which American narrative filmmakers broke away from the financial, bureaucratic, and (most importantly) imaginative influence of Hollywood values and entertainment story-telling methods to create the most important works in American film--a series of generally low-tech, low-budget, personal-expression films, made and distributed more or less outside the system. This section of the survey focuses on the younger generation of contemporary American independent feature filmmakers. The past fifteen years have seen the birth and development of a new kind of ultra-low-budget DIY filmmaking that has been referred to by reviewers as "mumblecore." Almost all of these works have been created by filmmakers in their 20s and 30s who themselves write, shoot, edit, and often act in their own films, with other young non-professional actors playing the other roles. The result is a series of films that have their finger on the pulse of contemporary sexual and social mores and communicate what it is to be young, restless, eager, and uncertain in the world in which we actually live. Since women have made some of the best and most important works in this area, as many female filmmakers as possible are being included. Offered in the spring of odd numbered years.