This interview with Sundance festival director emeritus John Cooper and senior programmer John Nein was recorded in 2021.

Directed by William Greaves • 1968 • United States
Starring William Greaves, Patricia Ree Gilbert, Don Fellows

In his one-of-a-kind fiction/documentary hybrid SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM TAKE ONE, director William Greaves presides over a beleaguered film crew in New York’s Central Park, leaving them t...

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen • 1984 • United States
Starring John Getz, Frances McDormand, Dan Hedaya

Joel and Ethan Coen's career-long darkly comic road trip through misfit America began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner releases...

Directed by Les Blank • 1984 • United States

The life, culture and food of the polka culture in America today.

Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1984 • United States, Germany
Starring John Lurie, Richard Edson, Eszter Balint

With this breakout film, Jim Jarmusch established himself as one of the most exciting voices in the burgeoning independent-film scene, a road-movie poet with an affinity for Americana at it...

Directed by Martin Bell • 1984 • United States

Seattle, 1983. Taking their camera to the streets of what was supposedly America’s most livable city, filmmaker Martin Bell, photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and journalist Cheryl McCall set out to tell the stories of those society had left behind: hom...

Directed by Robert Epstein • 1984 • United States

A true twentieth-century trailblazer, Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised peop...

Directed by Donna Deitch • 1985 • United States
Starring Helen Shaver, Patricia Charbonneau

Donna Deitch's swooning and sensual first narrative feature, DESERT HEARTS, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, ...

Directed by Joyce Chopra • 1985 • United States
Starring Laura Dern, Treat Williams, Mary Kay Place

Suspended between carefree youth and the harsh realities of the adult world, a teenage girl experiences an unsettling awakening in this haunting vision of innocence lost. Based on Joyce Carol Oate...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1986 • United States
Starring Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, Amanda Goodwin

Sex work is portrayed with radical nonjudgment in Lizzie Borden’s immersive, richly detailed look at the rhythms and rituals of society’s most stigmatized profession. Inspired by the experience...

Directed by Al Reinert • 1989 • United States

In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert’s documentary FOR...

Directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Deborah Dickson, and Susan Froemke • 1990 • United States

Christo and Jeanne Claude's first grand-scale urban project, wrapping the oldest bridge in Paris - the same bridge where Christo courted Jeanne-Claude. A love story set in the heart of Paris: bet...

Directed by Whit Stillman • 1990 • United States
Starring Carolyn Farina, Edward Clements, Taylor Nichols

One of the great American independent films of the 1990s, the surprise hit METROPOLITAN, by writer-director Whit Stillman, is a sparkling comedic chronicle of a young man’s romantic misadven...

Directed by Jennie Livingston • 1990 • United States
Starring Dorian Corey, Pepper LaBeija, Angie Xtravaganza

Where does voguing come from, and what, exactly, is throwing shade? This landmark documentary provides a vibrant snapshot of the 1980s through the eyes of New York City’s African America...

Directed by Errol Morris • 1991 • United Kingdom, Japan, United States

Errol Morris turns his camera on one of the most fascinating men in the world: the pioneering astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, afflicted by a debilitating motor neuron disease that has left him without a voice or the use of hi...

Directed by Mira Nair • 1991 • United States, Uganda
Starring Denzel Washington, Sarita Choudhury, Roshan Seth

The vibrant cultures of India, Uganda, and the American South come together in Mira Nair’s MISSISSIPPI MASALA, a luminous look at the complexities of love in the modern melting pot. Yea...

Directed by Richard Linklater • 1991 • United States
Starring Richard Linklater, Kathy McCarty, Rudy Basquez

SLACKER, directed by Richard Linklater, presents a day in the life of a loose-knit Austin, Texas, subculture populated by eccentric and overeducated young people. Shooting on 16 mm for a ...

Directed by Jan Oxenberg • 1991 • United States

A lost-and-found revelation from indie film and TV maverick Jan Oxenberg is a docu-fantasy narrative focused on the filmmaker’s hilarious, messy, Jewish family as they prepare to say goodbye to someone they love. Narrated by a cardboard cutout of O...

Directed by Jean-Pierre Gorin • 1992 • United States

Jean-Pierre Gorin's gripping and unique film about a Samoan street gang in Long Beach, California, is, like other works by the filmmaker, a probing look at a closed community with its own rules, rituals, and language. Part observational docu...

Directed by Milcho Manchevski • 1994 • Republic of Macedonia
Starring Grégoire Colin, Katrin Cartlidge, Rade Šerbedžija

The first film made in the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, Milcho Manchevski’s BEFORE THE RAIN crosscuts the stories of an orthodox Christian monk (Grégoire Colin), a ...

Directed by Steve James • 1994 • United States

Two ordinary inner-city Chicago kids dare to reach for the impossible, professional basketball glory, in this epic chronicle of hope and faith. Filmed over a five-year period, HOOP DREAMS, by Steve James, Frederick Marx, and Peter Gilbert, follows y...

Directed by Gregg Araki • 1995 • United States, France
Starring James Duval, Rose McGowan, Johnathon Schaech

Gregg Araki takes a road trip to hell in this wild, meth- and fast-food-fueled joyride through the margins of a menacing American wasteland. When they inadvertently link up with a dangero...

Directed by Leon Gast • 1996 • United States
Starring Muhammad Ali

In 1974, Leon Gast traveled to Africa to film Zaïre 74, a music festival planned to accompany an unprecedented sports spectacle: the Rumble in the Jungle, in which late-career underdog Muhammad Ali would contend with the younger...

Directed by Miranda July • 2005 • United States
Starring John Hawkes, Miranda July, Miles Thompson

With this compassionate, startling comedy that could have come from no other artistic sensibility, the brilliant Miranda July reveals a world both familiar and strange—an original vision of creativ...