• Hysterical Blindness
• Monsoon Wedding
• Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love
• Mississippi Masala

The effort to capture the extraordinariness of everyday life is something that I learned directly from cinéma vérité filmmaking. I was taught to have the humility to absorb the worlds I was documenting, and to be visually engaged with the world around me, no matter how different it is from my own Indian culture. I have been taught time and again, from Salaam Bombay, right on through to Monsoon Wedding, that authenticity is my treasure. When a film is terribly local, it becomes hugely universal.

• The Blues
• The Annihilation of Fish
• To Sleep With Anger
• Killer of Sheep

For many people, independent film is not defined by how much freedom you have to indulge yourself artistically. It's more about being able to do something culturally relevant. To authentically represent a culture on-screen without distortions and stereotypes is a type of independence few filmmakers enjoy, inside or outside the studio system.

• The Good Girl
• Six Feet Under: Episode: "The Will"
• Chuck & Buck
• Star Maps
  

I've made three features so far and they all very much fit my definition of independent film — independently financed, with no studio support, and I've been fortunate to have creative control over all three films. More importantly, and this is how I truly define independent cinema, is that each movie has been an effort. I've been trying, and I don't know if I'm succeeding, to get across an idea that is meaningful to me. That's what I like about independent cinema — a filmmaker gets to express something that is personally meaningful.

The biggest change in the independent world today, to me, is that the entry fees to becoming a filmmaker have plummeted. There is more access and therefore a much bigger variety of people making movies. Not as many indie films are making money at the box office, but the work is more interesting and diverse than it's ever been. We are living the promise of the digital revolution. It's not an issue anymore for audiences or distributors to watch digital films. It's made the range of independent voices that much larger.

• The Yards
• Little Odessa

Independent movies typically mean financial independence. But all the indie distributors — Miramax, New Line, etc. — are part of multi-nationals, now, so financial independence, unless you are literally paying for it yourself, is an illusion. The way I look at independent film is: "Are you making a personal film? Are you making something that matters to you on an emotional level, regardless of the budget?" I call it squaring the circle — the ability to include elements that audiences seem to be interested in and at the same time depict a story that is emotionally close to you.

Younger filmmakers who respect my work approach me and ask whether the Guild if is right for them. I say, 'Guys, the door is open and you should go. The Guild offers the best protection for us, the filmmakers.' Experienced directors make themselves available to advise young filmmakers. It's so important to stay together, since we don't know what changes will be coming and what is coming next. Every time I can come to a meeting I am so happy to be with other independent filmmakers at the Guild.

• Possession
• Nurse Betty
• Your Friends & Neighbors
• In the Company of Men
  

Being an independent filmmaker is no guarantee of being good. Sometimes it just means that anybody who had money and sense said "no" to the script. It would have been lousy for $100 million or $100,000. Like every year, we'll see really strong independent films get made, and a great deal of mediocre films, both studio and independent.

But you can't help but see films like In The Bedroom, The Man Who Wasn't There, Mulholland Drive, and realize there are extremely active minds at work in this industry. These directors don't feel freakish. They make movies they would like to see themselves and strongly believe there are people out there who will feel the same way.

• Enigma
• The World Is Not Enough
• The Seven Up documentary series
• Nell
• Incident at Oglala
• Thunderheart
• Gorillas in the Mist
• Coal Miner's Daughter
  

I'm obsessed by the struggles independents like myself have with finding distribution. I experienced that with my last film, Enigma, and every time I do a documentary, I have this same struggle. That's the most comforting thing about working within the studio system — it requires a lot of compromises, financial pressures, etc. — but you do have that wondrous comfort of knowing your film will be seen.

The only way to surmount this is through your own pure industry — leaving no stone unturned. You have to generate as much confidence as you can in the documentary or challenging independent film to make them marketable. You can't expect people to give away money just to put your vision out there. You've got to place your work within an entertainment form, and just keep knocking on doors until the distributors take notice.

When I go around to festivals representing the DGA, I tell the filmmakers that they are the future of our industry. Where else are we going to move forward in the daringness of material but independent films? Financial pressures have evaporated the training system that taught me my craft. People are going to learn how to make movies in the independent world and it's incredibly important for us to nurture that.

• Our America
• Blind Faith
• Bones
• Juice
  

Digital Technology is making filmmaking accessible to a larger number of people. Films can be made cheaper, and if not cheaper, at least the money that goes into the film can be rechanneled into other areas. But I think it's exciting. Like any new technology, it still has its drawbacks and still needs to get the kinks worked out. But knowing the way the human spirit is, we'll get them worked out. The future is definitely digital, no doubt about it.

• Two Family House
• Bronx Cheers
  

It's now come to mean any sort of movie that has any voice at all. I heard a terrifying thing A project of mine was submitted to a well-known production company, and they said, 'We have a mandate. We don't do voice movies.' And I said, 'What does that mean?' It sounds like talkies or something. And they said, 'Oh, no, that means a movie with a filmmaker's voice, that's not what we're looking to make.' And I thought, well really, it has nothing to do with how you finance a movie, it has nothing to do with how a studio develops it or not, the truth is if the movie has a personality at all, it's now called an independent film, and if it doesn't, chances are that it's a non-voice movie. I thought that was a chilling reminder of what it is to be in an art that's a commerce as well. It's so stratified now that it's accepted.

• Protozoa
• Pi
• Requiem for a Dream

I think Todd McCarthy from Variety had the best definition of independent film. He said that the creative is independent from the financial realities. Independent film exists in and out of the studio system. It's just a way of making a movie, a spirit of approaching film.

The beautiful thing about the DV revolution is that I wouldn't have to raise money for f today. When I was shooting f that wasn't an option. But I'm sure if I were starting out today I would be shooting a DV movie. Of the $60,000 I used to make Pi, probably 30–40 went toward film. But if I had to raise money, I would try the same grass-roots level that we did with f. Get your community to help you out, turn it into a family affair. In either case, DV is the future for breaking into the industry.

Is a new generation of filmmakers going to miss out by not shooting on film? That's a big debate. There already have been some masterpieces made on video and it's only getting better. I hate to say it, but film is struggling for footing. Video is coming close to approximating the aesthetic of film. I remember being on a panel about three or four years ago, in 1998, and people were arguing at that point that there wouldn't be any films released that were shot in video and I was like: "You're out of your mind." Audiences watch Cops as much as anything else.

• Wild Man Blues
• In the Boom Boom Room
• Harlan County USA
• American Dream

I think that independent film really hasn't changed that much for me. I'm still making independent films, but then there's also a whole other market that starts to appreciate nonfiction films so you make them more readily. People understand what they are, and they're not something you had to see when you were ten years old in school that are boring. They're exciting. They're fun. They're dramatic. They're alive.