A brief but highly influential period in French cinematic history, covering the years from 1959 to 1964, when certain historical, technological and economic factors combined to enable a group of young filmmakers to express their personal and political concerns by taking cinema out of the studio and into the street. Truly the first "independent" filmmakers, their style of using lightweight equipment, cheap film stocks and low-budget location shooting can still be seen in recent american films such as Richard Linklatter's Slacker and Spike Lee's She's Gotta Have It.