Shadows

A film not to be missed.

John Cassavetes’s directorial debut revolves around a romance in New York City between Lelia, a light- skinned black woman, and Tony, a white man. The relationship is put in jeopardy when Tony meets Lelia’s darker-skinned jazz singer brother, Hugh, and discovers that her racial heritage is not what he thought it was. Shot on location in Manhattan with a mostly nonprofessional cast and crew, Shadows is a penetrating work that is widely considered the forerunner of the American independent film movement.

Recommended by 4 People

“Bookie, Opening Night, Faces, Shadows, and the later-added Love Streams are film school for a hundred bucks. We watch the master turn actors into people and vice versa and hold the feeling above anything else.”

Josh Safdie

Director, Writer

“My God, to think that he was actually in 1959 and decided to try to make a movie on his own without having any Studio... that's what makes Cassavetes so amazing—that he just said, 'Look, I want to do this. These are the people I want to work with. This is a story I want to tell.'”

Barry Levinson

Director, Writer, Producer

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Benny Safdie

Barry Jenkins