New American Cinema
Pravina Cooper | Professor
This lecture will explore the various facets of independent film making in the United States since the late 70s including aesthetics, context, formal characteristics, issues of authorship in recent Indie films in the U.S. We will view excerpts of films from auteurs such as Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Trained at Film School these directors shared the avant garde sensibilities of their European mentors. Soon after George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were to change the industry standards with their high concept blockbuster productions, Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989) was released and the new American Independent cinema movement was born. Tarantino, David Fincher, Cohen Brothers led the way in Independent Cinema.
Pravina Cooper has received a Doctorate in Comparative World Literature and Film Studies in October 2005 from UCLA. Her teaching interests include genres in film and theatre, critical theory, transnational literatures. She currently teaches Comparative Literature, Theatre and Film in the Comparative World Literature and Classics Department at California State University, Long Beach.
