American Movie (1999)

Directed by

Chris Smith

Genre

documentary film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 47m

Rated

R

Rating

7.6 of 10 from 277 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This documentary follows a struggling Wisconsin filmmaker, Mark Borchardt, as he tries to finish a low-budget short horror film. Money is tight, his crew is unreliable, and personal problems keep getting in the way of his movie dream.

observationaldryly funnyearnestunevenscrappylow-keyaffectionate

What happens

American Movie is a 1999 American documentary film directed by Chris Smith, produced by Smith and Sarah Price, and edited by Jun Diaz and Barry Poltermann. Filmed between September 1995 and August 1997, American Movie documents the making of Coven, an independent short horror film directed by Mark Borchardt. Produced for the purpose of raising capital for Northwestern, a feature film Borchardt intends to make, Coven suffers from numerous setbacks, including poor financing, a lack of planning, Borchardt's alcoholism, and the ineptitude of the friends and family he enlists as his production team. The documentary follows Borchardt's filmmaking process, interspersed with footage from both of Borchardt's developing projects. The filmmakers shot 90 hours of footage on 16mm film. American Movie received positive reviews and won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. It has since become a cult film. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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