MAVERICKS

The auteur theory the belief that a director s personal influence and artistic control over a movie are so great that the filmmaker is regarded as the key artist in making a film was first popularized in America by film critic Andrew Sarris In the New Hollywood Era of the 1960s and 1970s as weakening studio control granted directors more artistic freedom the theory gained traction embraced by both the media and by directors themselves and it came to be a significant factor in the filmmaking process With its almost ubiquitous acceptance the auteur theory also had in hindsight a negative effect It undeniably played a role in establishing and romanticizing the dominance of the white heterosexual male point of view while ignoring the contributions of screenwriters and cinematographers and worse excluding marginalized aspiring filmmakers from the industry Mavericks Interviews with the World s Iconoclast Filmmakers amplifies the voices of a wide ranging group of groundbreaking filmmakers whose identities perspectives and works don t conform to typical Hollywood standards Author Gerald Peary whose experience as a film studies professor film critic arts journalist and director of documentaries culminates in a lifetime of film scholarship presents a