''The American Dreamer'' is a 1971 American

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...

directed by

L. M. Kit Carson Lewis Minor Carson (August 12, 1941 – October 20, 2014) was an American actor, screenwriter, director and film producer. Career Carson first gained the notice of the film world when he starred in Jim McBride's mockumentary '' David Holzman's ...

and

Lawrence Schiller Lawrence Julian Schiller (born December 28, 1936) is an American photojournalist, film producer, director and screenwriter. Career Schiller was born in 1936 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents and grew up outside of San Diego, California. After atten ...

. It follows

Dennis Hopper Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in ''Giant'' (1956). In the next ten years ...

at his home and studio during the

post-production Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments. The ...

of the film ''

The Last Movie ''The Last Movie'' is a 1971 metafictional drama film directed and edited by Dennis Hopper, who also stars in the leading role as a horse wrangler named after the state of Kansas. It is written by Stewart Stern, based on a story by Hopper and St ...

'', which he directed and starred in. ''The American Dreamer'' was never released theatrically, though it was screened at film festivals and on college campuses. The film was thought to be

lost Lost may refer to getting lost, or to: Geography *Lost, Aberdeenshire, a hamlet in Scotland * Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, or LOST, a hiking and cycling trail in Florida, US History *Abbreviation of lost work, any work which is known to have bee ...

for over 30 years, until it was rediscovered, remastered, and released on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

and

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...

in 2016 by Etiquette Pictures.

Release

''The American Dreamer'' was screened at film festivals and on college campuses around the same time as the release of ''The Last Movie''. It did not receive a wide theatrical release.

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, the film has an approval rating of 88%, based on eight reviews. In a retrospective assessment, Steven Heller of ''

The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...

'' wrote: "The final cut of ''The American Dreamer'' represents a highly-constructed group effort that pushes the limits of documentary."

Peter Bradshaw Peter Bradshaw (born 19 June 1962) is a British writer and film critic. He has been chief film critic at ''The Guardian'' since 1999, and is a contributing editor at ''Esquire''. Early life and education Bradshaw was educated at Haberdashers ...

of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' gave the film three out of five stars, writing that the film "tries to be

countercultural A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...

but the weirdest thing on show is opper'sgun obsession." He concluded that it "has archival value as a study of Hopper and a footnote to the

American new wave The New Hollywood, also known as American New Wave or Hollywood Renaissance, was a movement in American film history from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence. They influenced the types o ...

Home media

In 2015, ''The American Dreamer'' was restored in 2K and released on

and

by Etiquette Pictures.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:American Dreamer, The 1971 documentary films 1971 films 1970s rediscovered films American documentary films Documentary films about film directors and producers Films directed by Lawrence Schiller Rediscovered American films 1970s English-language films 1970s American films