Big City, Little Movies

In so many ways,New York dominates the American cultural landscape, but usually, to make it big there, you’ve got to be pretty big yourself. But a new generation of filmmakers are making a name for themselves in the Big Apple by going small. “Culturally vibrant, if economically still fragile, New York has quietly been emerging as the world’s primary clearinghouse for a fast-expanding pool of very-low-budget movies. A ragtag posse of former college film series promoters, ex-gofers at major studios and chronically underfinanced filmmakers – their way paved by the low costs and relative ease of digital technology – has coalesced here into a commercial brokerage and cinematic salon devoted largely to the ‘little’ film.”