Seminar: American Movie

American Movie captures a major cultural shift at the turn of the 21st century—that being a movie director had become the American dream. 

Constructed in a fast-cut, interview-based nonfiction style that anticipates millennial comedies like Arrested Development and The Office as much as other documentaries, American Movie depicts independent film production run amok. This seminar will look at the way the film industry of the 1990s set the stage for the sort of production shown in American Movie—and give updates on what the film’s subjects are up to now in the 2020s, too. 

About Jake Mulligan: 

Jake Mulligan was the film section editor at DigBoston from 2015 through its closure, and has led film education programs at the Coolidge Corner Theatre since 2017, including the courses “Defining Screwball Comedy” and “Roger Corman, Producer.” His work was also published in The Boston Phoenix and The Boston Globe, among other publications.