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30. Sweet Sweetback Baadassss'
Song (1971), d. Melvin Van Peebles
Made for $50,000 and grossing $10 million, Sweetback was financed,
produced, written, directed, scored and starred by Melvin Van Peebles
and one of the very few Black movies of the '70s to emerge from a completely
black artistic sensibility. Obscene, frenzied, painful, the movie sees
the titular hero go on the run after stomping a couple of cops unconscious,
throwing up a series of violent set-pieces that comment on both Black
stereotypes and blaxploitation staples. Showing a whole generation of
black filmmakers the way forward, the guerrilla filmmaking and canny
marketing campaign also provide pointers for every no-budget filmmaker
following in its wake.
29. Bad Lieutenant (1992), d. Abel Ferrara
As uncompromising and maverick-minded as its director, Bad Lieutenant
is certainly the most notorious, searingly emotional and profound of
Abel Ferrara's back catalogue of scuzz and sleaze. Starring indie darling
Harvey Keitel - in a mesmerising and extraordinarily brave performance
- as a seriously corrupt, guilt-ridden, devoutly Catholic cop, this
is a breathtaking modern-day parable of sin and redemption that is so
hardcore, so unflinching in its portrayal of a man's descent into Hell
and his scrabbling attempts to get into Heaven that it simply had to
be an independent movie. And we haven't even mentioned the scene where
Keitel quite literally pulls over two girls on the freeway...
28. In The Company Of Men (1997), d. Neil LaBute
Neil LaBute had been a powerful voice in the American
theatre for a few years until he turned his hand to cinema, and knocked
one out of the park first time out with this bitter, acid-edged , unwavering
look at the evil that men do. In this case, the mendacious misanthropy
comes from two guys (Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy), both recently dumped,
who make a bet to toy with the affections of a deaf woman (Stacy Edwards).
It - and LaBute - have been accused of misogyny, but the movie - as
impassive as it is - leaves us in no doubt that Malloy and Eckhart are
the slime of the universe.
27. Dark Star (1974), d. John Carpenter
There are those who will argue that Halloween
is the better John Carpenter film, more deserving of recognition here.
They're right and they're wrong. Halloween
is indeed the better film - it was a terrific (in both senses), genuinely
scary template for horror for the next decade, while Dark Star
is a wildly uneven, low-budget-to the-point-of-impeding-your-enjoyment
sci-fi. But the very fact that Dark Star found screens at all,
its more creative story content (life onboard the ship being unsatisfactory,
the philosophising bomb as a brilliant extension of 
2001's self-aware HAL), and the issue
that without it Carpenter's career wouldn't exist, gets this over the
line.
26. Lost in Translation (2003), d. Sofia Coppola
Intelligence and emotional honesty are all too rarely
elements that make-up a romantic comedy. Sofia Coppola's meditation
on romantic and cultural alienation, however, strips out the clichés,
tired chat-up lines and drunken sex, leaving us with a simple, touching
collision of two lost souls. This was a plum role for Scarlett Johanssen
and a long-awaited return to form for Bill Murray, coaxing forth what
is arguably the best performance of his entire career. While Coppola
made her bones as an indie director with her adaptation of The Virgin
Suicides, this original story, with its frank but tender realism
and wry humour, remains her crowning achievement.
25. Drugstore Cowboy (1989),
d. Gus Van Sant
Wanna check the indie credentials of Drugstore Cowboy? OK,
never mind that Gus Van Sant - perhaps the most indie-centric, experimental
film-maker working just outside the American mainstream today - directed
it. Never mind that it's a non-judgmental look at drug culture and the
mindset of a group of people (led by a never-better Matt Dillon and
Kelly Lynch) who break into drugstores in order to get their prescription
pill high. Never mind that it's a hazily lensed, at times bleak, at
times funny and touching, near-masterpiece, always unflinching but never
unfeeling. You want to know why Drugstore Cowboy is an indie
film par excellence? William S. Burroughs in it. Like, wow man...
24. Happiness (1998), d. Todd Solondz
A more ironic title you will be hard put to find, as Todd Solondz takes
us on a hellish trek through the lives of a string of interconnected
misfits. The only thing these people - a phone sex pest and a pedophile
among them - have in common is misery. Not exactly the sort of film
you go to Disney to get funding for, but that's never been Todd's way.
Welcome To The Doll's House is equally eligible in terms of independence,
but this is firstly a more accomplished film, plus we're awarding kudos
points for keepin' it real after the success of his previous feature.
23. The Evil Dead (1981), d. Sam Raimi
The making of the Evil Dead very nearly lives up to the movie's
tagline, 'the ultimate experience in grueling terror'. In 1979, three
Detroit wannabe film-makers - producer Rob Tapert, actor Bruce Campbell
and director Sam Raimi decamped to a disused Tennessee cabin to shoot
a horror movie about five kids battling demons. They had precious little
money, borrowed equipment, no real clue of what they were doing and
- by the end - precious little sanity. But necessity is the mother of
invention, and The Evil Dead pulses with it. Virtually every
horror film-maker of the last 20 years has cribbed from Raimi's box
of camera tricks.
22. Nosferatu, A Symphony Of Terror (1922, Ger.)
(aka Nosferatu - eine Symphonie des Grauens), d. F.W. Murnau
Not so much the Granddaddy of indie films, as the mad Great uncle,
when F.W. Murnau decided he wanted to adapt Bram Stoker's Dracula,
he didn't let legal threats stop him - he just changed the names and
made a few tweaks. Murnau's ingenuity (and a court order) gets him in
here, but Nosferatu is also one of the best silent films ever
made, and one of the creepiest, sound or no. It contributed to making
German Expressionism an entire chapter in the cinema history books,
and is among the most homaged, pastiched, and parodied films ever made
- so indie they had to make an indie film about it.
21. Roger And Me (1989), d. Michael Moore
Before the Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine and the headline
grabbing Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore made a documentary about
the closure of the automobile plant in his hometown of Flint, Michigan
and the economic devastation that followed it, and it made his reputation.
All Moore's polemic skills are apparent here - there's the same sly
cross-cutting, the persistent hounding of people determined not to talk
to him, and interviews with the sort of 'ordinary' everyday loons that
only exist in small American towns. Arguably better than its successors
- Moore punctures pomposity in others without appearing pompous himself
- this is rabble-rousing stuff.
20. Slacker (1991), d. Richard Linklater
A prototype for Kevin Smith's Clerks, the film that launched
Richard Linklater's career is a simple look at a group of twenty-somethings
up to not much, really, one summer day in Austin. Free-thinkers all
- some would call them weirdos - Linklater's characters already display
the spontaneous, free-flowing dialogue that is his trademark, and the
sort of innovative structure (the characters meet, and the camera switches
from one to the next) that marks his best work. One of the most influential
films on the indie scene, this elevated mood over plot and dialogue
over action and showed that a few good characters can make a classic.
19. Lone Star (1996), d. John Sayles
John Sayles has never in his 25 years as a director, helmed within the
studio system, making him a rarity: an indie filmmaker that hasn't a)
become part of the system, or b) vanished up his own arse. Lone Star
is where Sayles' technical skills caught up with his storytelling abilities.
His familiar theme of contemporary America under the burden of its own
glossed-over history is folded into a murder mystery ensemble piece,
spanning two Texan generations, and utilising some of the best flashbacks
ever seen. It's brilliant, it's intelligent, and it's refreshingly beyond
Hollywood.
18. Withnail And I (1987, UK), d. Bruce Robinson
Another entry from Brit mini-production house Handmade, this is
one of those masterpieces that almost didn't happen. Producer Denis
O'Brien hated the first rushes, threatening to fire writer / director
Bruce Robinson - who had already quit once already before lunch on the
first day. The film is possibly one of the finest on-the-page screenplays
ever written, brought to life with an understated style that the mainstream
simply wouldn't dream of attempting. Sadly much of its popularity has
been within the student community, who still believe that endlessly
quoting the lines (often incorrectly) will make them as funny as the
title characters, but don't let that sour the genius.
17. City of God (2002, Braz.), d. Kátia Lund,
Fernando Meirelles
There can be no greater commitment to filmmaking than
putting your life on the line to tell a story. Such are the lengths
Fernando Meirelles, Katia Lund and their crew went to while filming
City of God in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Shooting (and trying
to avoid being shot) among the gangs and street violence of and recruiting
a cast from the slum kids themselves, they retell a true story of crime,
corruption, degradation and a complete disregard for human life in '60s
Rio's most notoriously violent slum. Heavily improvised and impressively
performed, City of God is a powerful, beautiful film that's as
emotionally devastating as it is technically stunning.
16. She's Gotta Have It (1986), d. Spike Lee
Non-union actors, no retakes, a director who demanded
that his actors keep their drinks cans for the recycling money - budgets
don't get much lower than this. Debate still rages about whether the
plot - about a woman with three different boyfriends to provide different
emotional and sexual needs - is a marvel of feminist filmmaking or misogyny
of the worst sort, but either way the film's humour and lively characters
brought Spike Lee to the attention of audiences and paved the way for
his particular outlook on life. And since he was, until the arrival
of John Singleton at least, the only major African-American director
in Hollywood, that's an important perspective to have.
15. Blood Simple (1984), d. Joel Coen
The Coen Brothers launched themselves upon an unsuspecting
world with this noir throwback in 1984, and they haven't looked back.
But all their subsequent success - and many of their trademark flourishes
- can be dated back to this Texas-set tale of private eyes, murder most
foul and more double (triple, and quadruple) crosses than you can count.
The style is present and correct in the almost black-and-white locations
and bright red blood, but it's the tone that stands out. Like Fargo
without the warmth of Marge Gunderson, or Miller's Crossing without
the qualms of conscience, Blood Simple is the darkest, and arguably
up there with the best, of the Coens' films.
14. Stranger Than Paradise (1984, W. Ger/US), d.
Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch is another in the small canon of American
directors who have spent their entire career outside of the mainstream
- hell, even when he's got Johnny Depp in his movie the box office seems
relatively unperturbed. But it's this early work - just his second feature
- that stands among the best. Possibly the biggest reason for Stranger
Than Paradise's inclusion here is, despite all outward appearances,
Jarmusch's craftily disguising that he knows exactly what he's on about.
It wasn't for another film or two that his themes of the universality
of humankind, regardless of race, creed or colour, became apparent.
Consider also his legacy on the likes of Wayne Wang and Greg Araki.
13. Memento (2000), d. Christopher Nolan
Christopher Nolan's modestly budgeted sleeper hit managed to claw
it's way over the indie fence and into mainstream recognition on pure
ingenuity. Before Memento, the 'character with amnesia' subgenre
was, generally, a rather tired one (and has become so again since),
but using the simplest of devices - telling the story's episodic structure
in reverse order - the filmmakers (Nolan's brother Jonathan wrote the
basis of the screenplay) forged a tale that was arse-clenchingly compelling,
and ironically, unforgettable. And let's not forget it was the first
major breakthrough in screenwriting structure since Pulp Fiction
and its many clones, which in itself deserves an award.
12. Eraserhead (1977), d. David Lynch
Another piecemeal movie - shot over five years on a virtually
non-existent budget, prompting lead Jack Nance to keep that same distinctive
pre-Marge Simpson haircut for the duration of the shoot - Eraserhead
is one of the strangest, most perplexing movies you'll ever see. It's
jam-packed with deeply unsettling imagery, a grating, scraping, percussive
soundtrack and an almost omnipresent sense of dread and doom. Despite
all that, it's one of Lynch's most complete, a true surrealist masterpiece
for everybody, barring the guy who made it - in Lynch's world, this
is probably the equivalent of Bad Boys 2.
11. Bad Taste (1987, NZ), d. Peter Jackson
Compared to the long hard slog that was making Bad Taste,
the Rings trilogy was a walk in the park. Famously funded almost
entirely by himself and shot on weekends over a period of FOUR YEARS,
Jackson not only wrote, directed, and appeared in a couple of roles,
but supervised the special effects, constructed makeshift 'steadicam'
equipment and probably made the tea, too. The result is as ramshackle
as you'd imagine, but is also an endlessly inventive, vibrant alien
invasion movie with extraordinary levels of gore, black comedy and an
early peek of the scampish, OTT sense of humour that is evident in even
the most serious and worthy of PJ's canon. At times you can almost hear
him giggle himself silly, behind the camera.
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