Corman's World

Corman's World (2011) is a feature documentary you can watch online on iFILM. Director Alex Stapleton built her portrait around a simple, staggering fact: Roger Corman directed more than 50 films and produced several hundred more across five decades, operating almost entirely outside the studio system.

The film is built on testimony from the people Corman spotted before anyone else did. Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Jonathan Demme — names that now headline any history of American cinema — all cut their teeth in his low-budget productions. Corman himself never received a competitive Oscar for directing; the Academy finally gave him an honorary statuette in 2009.

Ninety-one minutes that amount to an argument: independent filmmaking didn't just happen — someone willed it into existence, cheaply and at scale. Stream Corman's World (2011) online on iFILM.